Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“The Holy Ghost,” she mocked. “What a ludicrous concept. And he isn’t here.”

“The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. He is everywhere. Especially here.”

“Truth.” He heard a slashing sound and turned. Her razor had ripped open the seat of the upholstered desk chair.

Matt shrugged. “You rented the room. I didn’t.”

“I put your name on the reservation.” Her tone was childishly spiteful.

He eyed the destroyed property. “It can be repaired.”

“And you’ll pay for it.”

The glare in her blue green eyes was laser-intensive. Matt was reminded of the wicked queen in Snow White. Jealousy. Was that Kitty the Cutter’s prime motive? He’d smiled at Temple’s apt and quick-witted characterization of the demon haunting them all. Kitty the Cutter.

His calm angered her more. “I can cut you again as easily.”

“Surface wounds. For show. Your own run deeper.”

“So that’s what you’re here for? Comparing scars? Show me yours. Show me mine on you.”

“It’s shrunk to a thin white line, Kathleen, bloodless. Not interesting at all. You are interesting, though.”

“Oh.” She threw herself onto the pillow-mounded bed, her tight mesh skirt riding up to show white thigh and iceberg-sharp knees, seductive, the straight razor stropping back and forth on the encrusted comforter fabric, as if being wiped free of blood. “Mr. Midnight, counselor of the idiot wind, the Dysfunction Nation airwaves. You want to psychoanalyze me?”

Matt sat on the defaced chair, bracing his arms on its carved gilt arms. “I think ‘psycho’ is the operative word.”

She laughed, mocking him. “You’re trapped. You’re trapped because you worry about other people when you should be worrying about yourself. You’re trapped because you think you can still do good and be good. You’re trapped because you know I can do anything.”

“No, I don’t know that, Kathleen.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Rebecca, then?” he asked deliberately.

She sat up. “Where’d you get that name?”

“Or Shangri-La?”

She relaxed back against the pillows. “Just how many people do you think I can be?”

“As many as you need to be, but that’s an interesting question. You could have multiple personality disorder. Or just be an extreme drama queen.”

“You’re one to call me names. An ex-priest in an unsanctioned relationship. You’d do anything to keep your little redhead safe, wouldn’t you?”

She rose, set the razor on the marble nightstand with a sharp click, and oozed across the bed toward him. Taffeta crinkled like dead leaves under a boa constrictor.

Matt couldn’t help thinking his “drama queen” diagnosis was right on. A slinking femme fatale was pretty predictable, except he knew this one was no TV cliché, but a woman who had liked to play with her prey since her teens.

That meant she at least needed her victims alive to squirm.

Kathleen was fixated on tormenting men and he knew the reasons why. The question was, did she? On the surface, maybe she did, but deep down everyone has a “story,” some deep personal blind spot. And around it they construct a distorted world view to justify what they need to believe of that world.

He stood and spelled out his terms. “You set the time and place for this session. I set the parameters. Temple is off the table. You mention her or her name and I walk.”

“Oh, going all terse and manly. You knew when you came here that I can put you up against the wall with one slash of my razor on someone else’s throat.”

“No. You can get me to come out and play shrink with you, but one more threat and it’s your neck that’s in jeopardy.”

“You’d kill me, Father Be Good?”

“Ex-father, and even if that weren’t so, there’s no vow against justifiable homicide.”

“And since when did priests keep vows of poverty, obedience, and, particularly, chastity? Look at you, Mr. Ex. You’ve become wealthy listening to whiners on the radio.”

“Poverty is not a vow made by parish priests, only within certain orders, such as Jesuits and Franciscans.”

“So it’s all right to rake it in on the miseries of others.”

“I donate ten percent.”

“Paltry.”

Matt sat down, taking a negotiating tone again. “You’re right. I set up that percentage when I wasn’t making much money or anticipated doing that. I’ll up it. Twenty-five percent strike you as fair?”

“You’d, you’d do that because I challenged you? Wishy-washy, aren’t you?”

Of course, anything you’d say to a psychopath became a lose–lose for you.

“Not at all,” Matt answered. “You’ve put your money where your mouth is. From all accounts, you’ve spent a good part of your life raising money for a cause. It was a just cause of human rights violations even if the IRA resorted to terrorism before the al-Qaeda terrorist extremism so appalled them that both sides in Northern Ireland saw the light and struck a peace.”

Kathleen cast herself on her elbows at the foot of the bed, displaying deep cleavage three feet from his chair. “I put my mouth where the money was. Is that not a sin even in the service of a just cause? Can you absolve me of sin?”