Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Read online

  All this YouTube nostalgia reminds me of the Moulin Rouge, Vegas’s first hotel-casino with all-black entertainment. All the Strip’s white show-stoppers went there to stage their own integrated late, late show: Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr. After that, the Strip had to integrate because of the competition, so the need was gone and the Moulin Rouge only lasted eight months in nineteen fifty-five.

  It occurs to me, as I rock and roll with Louise and all these ghosts of times past, that there might be a very important footnote to the Moulin Rouge saga, something seriously relevant to the memories and cycles of life and death, but personal and institutional in this forgotten venue.

  But now that I have listened to “Get Happy” singer Judy Garland tell me to “come on get happy” (although she never did, poor woman) and watched Elvis walk down Lonely Street to Heartbreak Hotel, I cannot quite recall what that is.

  That is a pity. I yawn as the music and motion grows faint and feeble and fades, as do we all. Miss Midnight Louise and I lose our rhythm and find ourselves waking up from conking out on a pile of plastic garbage bags for a bed in the dark, empty basement. We leave to walk through the Vegas dawn to get a little peace and quiet.

  18

  Family Matters

  Suburbia was a new landscape for Matt…not to mention how strange being officially viewed as a prospective son-in-law was. He wondered how an essentially irreligious family of Unitarians would regard a formerly celibate priest as Temple’s future husband. At least, like stage magician Max Kinsella, Matt was slightly famous because of his radio talk show.

  As he stood and shook hands with the strapping Barr family men, he saw that Temple’s relatives were less bombastic than his large Polish family clan, but they were bigger people. They seemed like bodyguards as they escorted him and Temple up the exterior stairs and into the house’s main living area that stretched above the garage below. A sliding glass door in the living room overlooked a deck.

  The low, eight-foot ceilings made Matt uneasy, like being a sandwich meat everybody was examining for two much fat. He was used to and loved the Circle Ritz’s high, barrel ceilings. His family’s venerable Chicago row houses and two-flats boasted ten-foot ceilings.

  Matt relaxed with a tiny sigh when Temple’s beefy dad released her from a bone-squeezing hug, pumped Matt’s hand with an accompanying backslap, and then suggested they all go out on the deck for barbecue and beer. That seemed familiar.

  Ah, air as fresh as the great outdoors. The cedar wood deck was expansive enough to hold a picnic table for twelve and overlooked a sea of mowed grass that lilted in gentle swells to a row of untrimmed bushes and trees. Minnesota tamed and Minnesota wild.

  “Grew up in Chicago, I hear.” Roger Barr confirmed with a grin. “City boy. This grass here is heaven. Until you have to mow it.”

  “Can’t argue,” Matt said, enjoying the breathing room so he could take in…four chunky guys all older than he, all wearing loose khaki shorts and well-filled-out T-shirts celebrating the Vikings, the Timberwolves, the Swarm and the Wild. The St. Paul Saints on Daddy Barr’s chest gave Matt hope. God help me, Matt thought quite sincerely. He did not speak Sports. He was a stranger, yes. And in a strange land, even more so.

  Temple was disappearing into each brother’s embrace in turn, but emerging uncrushed. “Gee, guys,” she said, “I’m glad to see you again, too, and your full heads of Hair Club for Men.”

  That was a joke. Keith, David, Tom and Hank were in various forms of transition to forty and middle age, which meant more middle and less luxuriant hair topping.

  Matt duly shook their hands, which ended with a final slap each time. Good thing his job didn’t rely on using a computer keyboard, like Temple’s. His shoulders would be out for a week if this continued.

  “Say, Matt,” said Keith, the apparent eldest. “We don’t generally watch daytime TV, but Mom insisted we eyeball a tape of The Amanda Show, and you are one cool talker, guy.”

  By then Temple had arrived at Matt’s side to slip an arm through his.

  Bad move, Matt thought. The boys didn’t want to see he had a sponsor.

  “It’s a living,” Matt said with a shrug.

  Temple opened her mouth to (unfortunately) sing his praises and future talk show prospects, but suddenly all attention turned to the sliding glass doors from the house behind them.

  Matt, who’d wondered since he’d briefly met her in the chaos of a major Vegas banquet, what womanly steel had borne and put up with this lusty male throng—saw Temple’s mother in her element at last and stood still in shock and awe.

  She was a true “slip of a thing”. Her girlishly slim frame curved like a leaf about to be blown away, yet belied by those ample sixty-something laugh lines. Her short-cropped hair still flashed a glint of fiery red among the iron gray. Now he knew the gene pool Temple and her aunt, Kit Carlson Fontana, had sprung from, the fey side of the northern European spring, not the Viking one. It was insane to think this wiry elf could have carried and borne all these big-headed brothers, although Karen Barr broadcast the calm control of a woman who had managed child-bearing with amazing ease, like everything else in her life.

  “Matt Devine.” She paused in the open doorway to the deck, her extended arms holding a tray of muffins. “Put these out on the picnic table, sweetie, and we can all get eating.” She cocked an eye at her sons. “Yes, boys, you can safe-crack the ice chest for the Hamm’s beer now.”

  Matt was actually relieved to have some heavy lifting to do—Minnesota muffins weren’t wimpy. They were as big as his fist and darkly dotted with nuts and berries.

  Temple joined him at the redwood buffet table. “The worst is over,” she whispered. “Nephews tomorrow. They’re smaller and have slightly better manners. So far.”

  “Hamm’s beer?” Matt had never heard the brand name.

  “Founded here, and once the glory of Minnesota. Now owned by CoorsMiller, and just a select brand for oldsters. ‘From the land of sky-blue wah-ah-ters’,” she sang. “‘Hamm’s, the beer refreshing.’”

  Matt had never heard Temple sing and raised his eyebrows at her on-key soprano. “We could make beautiful music together on Electra’s Lowery organ at the Lovers’ Knot,” he said.

  She gave him a sassy hip bump. “We already have that covered at the Circle Ritz. As for home-grown products here, Land-o-Lakes butter is still a going concern,” Temple added with a smile. “Minnesota and heavy-duty dairy products keep on trucking.”

  “And your brothers.” Matt watched them grabbing hamburgers and heaping hot dog buns with tablespoons from a slimy pile of apparent bean spouts.

  “Sauerkraut,” Temple murmured under her breath.

  “Where are their wives?”

  “Saved for the visit’s second day. All those women and kids were deemed too overwhelming for you right off.”

  “I was a pastor at a Catholic parish, Temple,” Matt told her. “Large families are not a stress factor for me.”

  “This one will be. Whatever you do, don’t let my brothers talk you into a friendly game of touch football after lunch.”

  Matt eyed the huge, grassy yard. “I can do that.”

  “Not with my brothers.”

  Matt noticed Temple’s grip on her lowball glass had grown white-knuckled. “Where’d you get a cocktail?” he asked. “I could use one.”

  “In the kitchen with Mom. Out here, it’s only beer for boys. You do not want to look like an effete intellectual who knocks back Gilbey’s gin with that crowd.”

  “Gilbey’s?” Matt wrinkled his nose. “Not my brand of gin.”

  “Vegas spoils you. Toast the Hamm’s bear like a good boy.”

  “Bear? Aren’t the Bears a Chicago team?”

  “And you say you don’t speak Sports. Very good. A cartoon bear was the Hamm’s beer mascot.” Temple glanced over her shoulder. “Tom is heading our way. That can’t be good after three bears. I mean, beers.”

  “Temple, how much Gilbey’s is in
that glass?”

  “Enough for what’s next, I hope.” Temple edged around to stand beside him.

  “How’s about we take a stroll on the lawn,” Tom suggested to Matt. He was the Timberwolf T-shirt guy.

  Matt nodded at the shirt logo. “The Wolves going the distance?”

  “Basketball season is over,” Tom said with a frown.

  “Uh, right. I meant next season.”

  Keith turned to Temple. “Can we borrow your guy for a while?” His arm made a sweeping gesture to the backyard. “Introduce him to the great Minnesota outdoors.”

  Temple frowned. “I don’t want any grass stains on those khaki pants of his.”

  Tom hitched up his roomy knee-length shorts. “No problem, lil’ sis. We’ll take care of your guy.”

  “Do not call me ‘lil’ sis’,” Temple warned. “And your guts are an endangered species if you yobos get out of line with my guy.”

  Tom of the Timberwolves turned to shrug at his grinning three brothers in their equally aggressive team T-shirts.

  They surrounded Matt with collegial backslaps. “Just a little touch football to settle the sauerkraut.” Keith, the Viking, said that. Tom the Timberwolf nodded with cheesy sadistic glee.

  Matt let Temple’s super-sized big brothers swarm him in a pack down the deck stairs onto the yard. If touch football was the rite of passage here, he could manage it.

  Temple placed her hands on the deck rail, like Juliet on her balcony, and shouted down in a Kate the Shrew voice, “If you guys tear out the stitches from his bullet wound, I’ll see that you’ll be drinking your Hamm’s out of your shoes.”

  “Bullet wound?” Keith reared back to regard Matt with astonishment. “You have a bullet wound?”

  “Nothing major,” Matt said. “It was a while back.”

  “Bullet wound,” Tom of the Timberwolves repeated. “How on earth that’d happen, man?”

  “From a semiautomatic. Actually a Walther PPK.”

  “A James Bond gun. Cool,” Hank of the Wild said.

  “What’s a talk show host doing catching a bullet wound?” Bruce of the Swarm asked.

  “It’s complicated. Your sister is overreacting.”

  “Tell us about it, Matt,” Keith said. “No kidding. Somebody shot you? Why the hell?”

  Matt was amused he could make points with them without uttering a single lie. “I do my radio shrink gig at a Vegas radio station, WCOO. You know crazies abound in Vegas. And on live media if you do call-ins, you can attract the occasional fringe person. A stalker. It’s all in the ethernet…but occasionally a crazy gets through the security and breaks in.”

  “At the radio station? Someone came in and got a shot off?”

  “Like I said, rare. And the shot went wide of doing permanent damage, by an inch, I’m told. Crazy-proof security has now gone in. Not to worry, guys. I’ll survive to marry your”—he thought for a second—“your little sister.”

  Temple booed him from the deck, but her brothers grinned.

  “What the heck?” Tom rubbed his balding buzz-cut. “WCCO is our big radio station. Kinda weird coincidence.”

  “World’s full of them,” Matt said.

  “You seem pretty tough about getting shot,” Hank mused.

  “What’s tough is being a celibate priest,” Keith said. “I just don’t see that going with our little sister and a bullet wound.”

  Matt got inspired. “You’ve seen movies with martial arts monks, haven’t you, guys? Shaolin kung fu monks?” They nodded, puzzled by his drift. “The Catholic church has had monks and brothers for centuries too. ‘Brothers’, that’s what they’re called in the West. So. Nobody asks questions about their private lifestyle; nobody who lives.” Matt lifted his hands in a praying position and then separated them as he took a throwing stance. “We gonna toss a football around or not?”

  “Yeah, sure. Brother,” Tom said just before the football slapped Matt’s open palms and he took off running, ducking, and shouldering anyone in his way.

  Matt had played enough basketball and touch football with the parish high school teams to know how to keep it interesting, but not injuring. The Barr boys kept their moves at the same level now that they knew he was playing hurt. And that Temple was watching.

  So everybody worked up a light sweat and looked good and they all were soon relieved to hit the deck for a second round of food and drink. Or mostly drink for the brothers.

  “That ring is breathtaking.” Temple’s mother came to sit beside Temple and Matt on the long traditional sofa in the living room while Roger and the boys finished off the cooler contents from the deck. Hamm’s, the beer refreshing.

  Temple formally presented the ring on her left hand to Karen. “It’s vintage. I don’t think you had a chance to really study it at that large, noisy dinner table in Vegas.”

  The “boys” hadn’t even noticed the rubies and diamonds glittering on their sister’s knuckle. And now they were downstairs watching ESPN on the recreation room’s sixty-inch TV.

  “Of course, it’s vintage,” Karen said. “You were begging for dress-up clothes since you were three.” Karen smiled at her husband, who’d taken the big brown leather recliner after depositing three crystal lowball glasses of straight Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit on the coffee table. Sipping whiskey. “Who picked it out?”

  “Guilty,” Matt said.

  “I’m impressed.” Karen glanced at her husband.

  Roger Barr grunted, a content paterfamilias at the moment. “That’s a large bunch of bling for my baby girl’s tiny finger.”

  “Dad, if my finger is strong enough to hold my always overloaded tote bag by one strap, it sure can support a high-carat bunch of Art Deco.”

  “As you can support yourself,” he said. “We get it.” He glanced at Matt. “You know, these liberated days there isn’t anything for parents to do anymore but foot the bill.”

  “Dad, I’m a big girl. I’ll foot the bill for my own wedding.”

  “We will,” Matt said.

  “Then the only question is where and how,” Karen said, blue eyes glittering like sapphires.

  “My family is in Chicago. And very extended.” Matt shrugged his resignation. “They’re threatening the Polish cathedral.”

  “The cathedral is magnificent and its aisle is endless. I could have a train, a long, long train,” Temple told her mother. “I’ve always wanted to wear taller clothing.”

  “Remember, dear,” Karen countered, “we have a lovely woman minister at our Universal Unitarian congregation, and you could hold it anywhere, at the Historical Society in St. Paul or the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.”

  “The Swedish Institute mansion is gorgeous,” Temple told Matt.

  “You could have a train here too,” her mother mentioned, adding a tempting point.

  “What about Las Vegas?” Roger suggested. “Tons of fancy places.”

  “Possibly the best solution.” Karen sat forward. “Destination weddings are the thing these days, and the sports bars and casinos would keep your brothers busy and out of our hair.”

  “To us, Vegas is…” Temple sounded hesitant.

  So Matt finished her dropped sentence. “Old hat when you live there. Although Temple’s hotel client there would be sure put on the Ritz for us.”

  “Oh, the Crystal Phoenix is spectacular,” Karen agreed.

  “And,” Temple said, “we live at the Circle Ritz condos and our terrific landlady is a Justice of the Peace and has a wedding chapel on-site. Electra would be in Seventieth Heaven if we got married there.” She looked at Matt. “You played a Bob Dylan wedding march on Electra’s organ when we first met, remember?”

  “A Bob Dylan wedding march?” Karen was dubious.

  “You’d have to hear it on an organ to see what Temple means,” Matt said. “It’s ‘Love Minus Zero, No Limit’.”

  Karen shuddered. “Sounds hippy-ish.”

  The conversation lapsed into a generation gap silence.
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  “I know!” Temple said, revving up PR sell-mode and sitting taller to present her pitch. “They used to have progressive dinners in the seventies, each course at a different house. We could have progressive weddings.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Karen. “First, the bridal shower here in Minneapolis with your old girlfriends, then a simple UU wedding—”

  Temple took up the narrative. “And then the groom’s dinner in Chicago with Matt’s family and a full-regalia Catholic ceremony so we’re not living in sin in the eyes of the church.”

  “And then—” Karen was getting as carried away as Temple, “we all go to a lavish reception at your hotel in Las Vegas.”

  “After,” Temple says, “a brief civil ceremony in Electra’s Lovers’ Knot wedding chapel so her feelings wouldn’t be hurt. And it’s not ‘my’ hotel,” she said modestly, “although the owners make me feel like that.”

  “Oh,” her mother cooed. “Aldo’s brothers,” she told Roger. “The Fontanas are the large Italian family that ran to boys, too, and they look out for Temple. I’d love to meet and thank each and every one of them.”

  The mental picture of a flock of courtly Fontana brothers gathering around her elfin mother stopped Temple’s fantasy scenario cold.

  Matt hoped he didn’t look as dazed and white-faced as Roger Barr did at the moment. Both men sipped bourbon and kept their mouths shut.

  “Too expensive,” Temple said with a sigh.

  “Too exhausting,” her mother added.

  The women sat silent also, mulling over reality.

  After Temple’s brothers left at 7:30 p.m., Karen and Temple cleared up the picnic table while Matt and his future father-in-law tidied the popcorn and beer-can strewn recreation room on the lower level.

  “I suppose we’re expected to have a man-to-man talk,” Roger said, shoveling the mess into a huge garbage bag.

  “Do you have any questions?” Matt said.

  “Nope. I know what you do for a living, what you’re maybe gonna do. What you did do.” The already well-marked furrows on Rogers’s forehead deepened. “I’m a little uneasy about this stalker thing.”