“Sorry,” Clete said. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Welner said.
“In Texas, in these circumstances, the guilty couple would make a quick trip to Reno, or maybe over the border into Mexico, and come back a married couple. This was supposed to be a small, private ceremony.”
“This is not Texas,” Welner said.
“How can it be—and that ‘small, private ceremony’ I got from you—how can it be small and private when there’s going to be two hundred people here for the wedding?”
“This is not Texas,” Welner repeated. “There are people who had to be invited.”
Clete resumed walking toward his—formerly el Coronel’s—apartment, a bottle of wine in each hand.
“Why?”
“Because they are family friends and would be deeply hurt if they weren’t,” Welner said. “For example, el Coronel Juan Domingo Perón, whose name you mistakenly crossed off of Claudia’s guest list.”
Clete opened a door into the house by standing on his left foot and then pushing on the lever handle with his cowboy-boot-shod right foot. He turned and looked at the priest. “That wasn’t a mistake,” he said. “I crossed the sonofabitch’s name off on purpose.”
“And after discussing the matter with me, Señora de Carzino-Cormano put it back on.”
“Christ!” Clete said disgustedly, and resumed walking down the wide corridor to his apartment. Welner walked quickly after him.
A tanned, stocky, short-haired, blond woman in her forties, who was wearing a simple black dress with a single strand of pearls, came out of the side door that led to one of the apartments and blocked Clete’s path.
“I was about to come get you,” she announced. “And where are you going with that wine?” And then she saw Welner. “How nice to see you, Father,” she added and, smiling, offered him her hand.
“Mrs. Howell,” Welner said.
That was a mother, a good strong mother, talking to a son. She may not have borne Cletus, but she raised him from infancy. They are mother and son.
“I was just about to tell him—I spoke with Claudia—that you were coming for lunch. And I wanted him to be cleaner than that.” She gestured at his dirty clothing and grease-stained hands.
“I am en route to the shower,” he said.
“With the wine?”
“With the wine,” he said. “We’re celebrating—you heard?—the Cardinal has agreed to have Dorotéa’s priest in the wedding.”
“I heard,” she said. “And Claudia told me who was responsible. Thank you, Father.”
“I did nothing,” Welner said.
“Why don’t you come with me? And we’ll have a little Champagne to thank you.”
“Father Welner and I are having a private little chat,” Clete said, smiling at her. “You know, man to man? Things a bridegroom should know?”
She smiled and shook her head in resignation. “You don’t have to go with him, Father,” Martha Williamson Howell said. “He has a tendency to believe that what he wants is what everybody wants.”
“In that, Mrs. Howell, he is very much like his father.”
“We’re having lunch in the gazebo,” she said, “in,” she looked at her watch, “twenty-five minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Clete said.
“Go easy on the wine,” she said, and stepped back through the door to her apartment.
Clete went the rest of the way down the corridor to his own apartment, which consisted of a sitting room, a bedroom, and what had been known as “el Coronel’s study.” As soon as he was inside he began to unbutton his shirt. “Open one of these, will you?” he said, handing the priest the wine. “I’ll be out in a minute.”