Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

thought you wanted to be treated like a woman.” Matt was surprised at himself for challenging this incendiary cousin with a crush on him.
    She grinned. “Not that way. Like the kind of woman you write off and put down. Polish Catholic burqa anyone? Like a nobody with nothing about her that counts.”
    “He’s old-fashioned. He can’t help it.”
    “So I should suffer?”
    “No.”
    She set down the beer. Moved closer on the couch. She wore a soft black sweater that ebbed off her shoulders like ebony surf. Cashmere maybe, or just a really good acrylic.
    Wow. He was really absorbing a lot from Temple. Including enough savvy to regard his high-spirited young cousin as sheer poison.
    “I’m mad at you.” She sounded like an adolescent again, emotionally bipolar. Also like a Lolita.
    “Why?” Might as well walk into it.
    “It could have been you.” When he continued to look blank, she added. “Last Christmas.”
    Matt sipped the beer, knowing he wouldn’t like where this was going.
    She mirrored his gesture, eyed him sideways. “Instead it was that loser Zeke.”
    “I met him. You brought him to the restaurant where my mother works. Apparently he wasn’t such a loser then.”
    “If you remember him, you know I’m not lying.”
    “He... like most guys his age he’s just self-involved, dead set on being too cool to care. Or too cool to appear to. He’ll civilize in a few years.”
    “I wish you’d told me that before I lost my so-called innocence to him.”
    “You—Krys, I don’t need to know this.”
    “Are you shocked?”
    “I don’t hand out moral judgments anymore. Gave that up for Lent, along with my Roman collar.”
    “You’re shocked, I can tell.”
    “Not shocked. Just not comfortable discussing this with you.”
    “You discuss things like that all the time on TV and the radio, in front of thousands of people.”
    “I don’t know them.”
    “I’m just being honest.”
    “You need to be honest with yourself. You don’t have to share the news with other people.”
    “You’re not other people. You could have been the one.” He shook his head. “Never would have happened. Face it; we’re first cousins. Even civil law, not just ecclesiastical law, frowns on that. I know family dynamics. First cousins are often first crushes but I’ve been too messed up myself to do unto others the same. It’s not that you’re not bright and attractive, trust me.”
    “Are you still—?”
    “It’s none of your business.”
    “You are!” It was an accusation. “Why?”
    When he didn’t answer, she shook his arm. “Are you saving yourself for someone?”
    Matt thought for a long moment. She had nailed it. The question was, should he be?
    “Because if you are, maybe a little preliminary practice, a dry run, would be just the thing. Cousin.”



The Wig Is Up

    “The show must go on” is an ancient theatrical maxim probably going back to the Greeks and the first ever chorus line on some hill in Thessaly.
    It was all too evident that reality television shows still abided by the same philosophy.
    Except that Temple and Mariah had been on Candid Camera much more frequently than the other candidates, so Big Brother and Sister had been watching Xoe Chloe’s every far-rambling move.
    Mariah returned to their room from her morning lifestyle counseling session feeling both nervous and rebellious.
    Temple had slept in, in her wig, which was now looking matted as well as lank and dispirited. In fact, it looked like the road kill of some thankfully unrecognizable species.
    She awoke grudgingly from dreams of Rafi Nadir and Matt Devine escorting her and Mariah to the father-daughter dance, except that Temple got Nadir for a father!
    “What a nightmare,” she muttered as Mariah shook her awake. Although, the alternate possibility of Matt as her “father” escort was even worse. And far more Freudian.
    Mariah was whispering in her ear. “They say I’m missing my beauty sleep and getting into trouble. I got a big lecture about bearing down on my diet and exercise program and staying away from you.”
    “Good idea.” Temple struggled up and pulled the bedside clock closer to read it in B.C. time. Before Contacts were installed for the day.
    “Yikes! My lifestyle session is in eighteen minutes. Gang way!”
    In fifteen minutes, Xoe Chloe was fully assembled, bedhead and all.
    “The great thing about punk,” Mariah noted from her watching post on the bed, “is that you can be