Cross Dressing (36 page)

R
uth was looking through the window at the television crew waiting in front of the Care Center. She was trying to figure out how she could get on camera. Maybe she could take the
reporter hostage. He looked like a friendly guy, she thought. He’d understand it was just in fun, right? Then again, she didn’t want to cause Dan any more trouble. She’d have to think of a less troublesome way to get on TV again.

The reporter’s name was Jim Hamashi. He was a sharp-looking guy of Asian extraction. He was standing in front of the Care Center nonchalantly waiting for the desk anchor to throw it to him. He tucked his little earpiece in a bit tighter and suddenly the lights went on. Jim came to life like a remote-controlled action figure and addressed the lens with a practiced affability. “Thanks, Jess,” he said. “Tucked away here, in a poor corner of the San Fernando Valley, is a humble place called, simply … the Care Center. It’s a place where those who have fallen through the cracks of government programs and the safety nets of mainstream charities go for food and shelter.”

Jim turned and walked up the steps into the Care Center, gesturing and narrating as he went. “As you can see, the Care Center operates on a shoestring budget, a shoestring that, unfortunately, is coming unraveled. In fact, the residents of this refuge are about to be thrown out on the street because the bank has foreclosed on their mortgage.” Jim continued down the hall toward Sister Peg’s office. “The person charged with trying to hold things together—the person who runs the Care Center—is a nun by the name of Sister Peg who
normally
works out of this office.” Jim stepped aside so the camera could pan the cluttered but unoccupied room. “But today Sister Peg isn’t here,” Jim said with a hint of sadness. “For more on that, let’s go to Val Logan. Val?”

“Thanks, Jim,” Val said. She was framed in a close shot so that a viewer was unable to see where she was standing. “The reason you don’t see Sister Peg behind that cluttered desk is that two days ago, she was gravely wounded in a drive-by shooting.”

The camera pulled back to reveal that Val was standing by the automatic sliding doors of a hospital. “And if you thought things couldn’t get any worse than that, think again. In another egregious example of patient dumping, the hospital where Sister Peg was treated for her wounds is kicking her out because she doesn’t have the money to pay her bill.”

Val turned just as the automatic doors of the hospital opened. Two orderlies emerged pushing a gurney on which Peg lay. Dan, wearing his clericals, walked alongside, apparently providing comfort. The orderlies stopped as Val approached to conduct her interview. “Sister Peg, what’s your reaction to getting the bum’s rush here?”

Peg slowly opened her eyes. Dan helped lift her head slightly so she could speak into the microphone. “It’s not their fault,” she said. “They have a business to run. I understand. I’m more concerned about the residents at the Care Center.” She laid her head back on the pillow. Dan nodded to the orderlies, who rolled the gurney down the sidewalk toward the old Suburban. Dan lagged behind.

“With me now is Father Michael Steele,” Val said. “Father, how is she?”

Dan played it very seriously. “Well, the doctors say she’s not out of the woods by a long shot, complications are possible, but they won’t let her stay here, so we’re taking her back to the Care Center.”

“Father, I know some of our viewers will want to help. What can they do?” In the background, viewers could see the orderlies loading Peg into the Suburban.

“Well,” Dan said. “We’re having a fund-raiser this Saturday. Anyone who wants to donate money or services or anything should give us a call. We’d appreciate it.”

Val nodded. “For those who want to help, you can call the number on your screen and someone will gladly answer all your questions.” Dan thanked Val and walked off camera.
“There you have it,” Val said. “A persevering Sister of Faith clinging to life in the hope that the public will pitch in and save her beloved center. Reporting from Burbank, this is Val Logan. Jess, back to you in the studio.”

“Looks like a very worthy cause,” Jess said with extreme unction.

“Indeed, it is,” Val replied. “I encourage everyone to come out and lend a hand.”

“Val, before you go, let me ask you a question,” Jess said. “I know there are a lot of different orders of nuns out there. Can you explain the difference between the Maryknolls, the Ursulines, and the Carmelites?”

Val smiled innocently. “As a matter of fact, Jess, I can. Everyone knows that the Carmelites are chewier.” She suppressed a big laugh. “Now, back to you in the studio.”

D
an had four days to turn the residents of the Care Center into a public-relations juggernaut.
Oy
, he thought. Dan gave Ruben a list of the top ten billboard locations in Los Angeles. The idea was to co-opt the messages on these billboards, turning them into promotions for the “Save Sister Peg” campaign.

Mrs. Gerbracht, Mrs. Zamora, Mr. Avery, and Captain Boone became the direct-mail department. Peg and Ruth composed an emotionally charged letter about the poor nun struggling to help the disenfranchised, and Dan punched it up. Monsignor Matthews got a copy of the mailing list of every Catholic in Los Angeles who had ever responded to a direct-mail appeal for funding. Gerbracht, Zamora, Avery & Boone, LLP, as they began to call themselves, addressed and stuffed the envelopes.

Mrs. Ciocchetti and Mr. Saltzman were turned into the “crackpot opposition team.” Their job was to call all the local television stations and local radio talk shows and oppose—in
radical terms—the notion that anyone should help this nun and her Care Center. Mrs. Ciocchetti argued loudly, frequently in Italian, and without any allegiance to logic in suggesting the whole thing smacked of socialism run amok. Mr. Saltzman played the belligerent atheist. The idea was simply to create conflict. The conflict would, at least in theory, create ratings which would result in greater awareness of the fund-raiser.

Once these parts of the machine were in motion, Dan and Monsignor Matthews hit the streets. Their first stop was the Great Western Forum in Inglewood. A call from the diocese to the Lakers’ front office had arranged a face-to-face with the team. When they introduced Alissa and explained what happened to a lot of kids who got sucked into the foster care system, the players had only one question. “Can we bring some friends?”

Monsignor Matthews leaned back to look up. “You can do anything you want.”

The players broke into their million-dollar endorsement smiles. They liked hearing that.

Dan and the Monsignor made similar trips to the offices of the Dodgers and the Kings and secured several more sports celebrities. Their next stop would be in Beverly Hills. They were heading for The Artist First Agency, where they hoped to sign up a few celebrities. As they struggled to get across town, slugging and cursing their way through the hordes of incompetent drivers, Dan and Monsignor Matthews talked about everything from their favorite television commercials, to the demise of the NBA after Michael Jordan, to their experiences at seminary. When Dan admitted to his agnostic leanings, Monsignor Matthews held up an index finger and said, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”

“I don’t believe you’ll find that in the Gospels,” Dan said.

“It’s Tennyson, though I forget the poem.” He looked over at Dan. “But he’s right.”

Dan smiled. “Peg told me you didn’t exactly adhere to the orthodoxy. I guess she wasn’t kidding.”

Matthews shrugged. “One does what one must,” he said. He talked about diverting funds to Catholic-run health clinics that supplied birth control advice and materials and he took a dim view of any priest who refused to administer the sacraments to gay Catholics.

“What about, uh”—Dan snapped his fingers a few times—“that chapter and verse about they shall surely be put to death and all that?” Dan asked.

“What, Leviticus?” The Monsignor made a dismissive noise with his mouth. “Hermeneutic nonsense,” he said. “Listen, I got a Jesuit friend who can cite Scripture to prove the earth is flat, but that doesn’t make it so.” Matthews gestured with his hands. “In my experience, when someone starts brandishing chapter and verse like a blunt object, your best strategy is to run like hell. In fact, for my money we could throw out everything except the Sermon on the Mount. You master that and everything else will follow. Sad to say, but the rest of that book is just a bad idea waiting to be interpreted.”

Dan pulled into the parking garage at The Artist First Agency. “So how do you reconcile what you do when it’s in opposition to Church doctrine?”

“I don’t have much choice. Look, if I …” He stopped and thought about it. “When you consider …” He stopped again, still searching for the right words. “My sins are much worse if I don’t follow my sense of where God is leading,” Monsignor Matthews said. “Secondly, I have to consider my sense of responsibility as a true disciple, and third, my own conscience tells me what I’m doing is right. And I’m not alone. I know a lot of priests who do the right thing, even when it’s contrary to dogma. That’s what’s good about the
Church. There are so many people who truly care.” Monsignor Matthews looked at The Artist First Agency’s beautiful art deco building. “So these guys represent the stars?” He gazed at the gold-leaf sconces that dotted the exterior of the building from top to bottom. “Looks like they’re doing pretty good business.”

Dan thought about the last payday of one of the agency’s clients. “Ten percent of twenty million’s nothing to sneeze at.”

Monsignor Matthews nodded. “Boy, talk about your tithing.”

T
he most famous billboards in Los Angeles are the ones lining the Sunset Strip, and the granddaddy of them all is the Marlboro ad that’s been there for the past seventeen years. The sign is a Hollywood landmark as well as a monument to the power of outdoor advertising. And lately people had been paying more attention to it, since it was scheduled to come down on the heels of all the tobacco legislation. That’s what made it such a great target.

It was two o’clock in the morning when Ruben climbed up the sign with a large poster board, a can of spray paint, and some glue. Forty-five minutes later he clambered back down and returned to the Valley. Dan called the newsrooms of several television stations as if he were the leader of some addle-brained terrorist group, anonymously claiming responsibility for what had been done to the billboard. Fortunately it was a slow news day, so that was all it took to get a reporter out at dawn’s first light to see if there was a story.

That morning both KCBS and the local Fox affiliate aired two-minute segments about the mysterious co-opting of the Marlboro sign. The billboard featured a lone malignant cowboy gazing silently out at the range, only now his silence had been broken. Ruben had attached a cartoon dialogue balloon
to the crease in the cowboy’s leathery mouth. “Forget the cigarettes,” the Marlboro man said. “Save Sister Peg.” Best of all, it looked like he meant it. The brand’s famous slogan had been altered to read, “Come to where the nun is.”

The KCBS reporter pointed up at the sign. “It seems to be a guerrilla PR stunt,” she said. “The ‘Save Sister Peg’ reference is an allusion to a fund-raiser happening this weekend out at the Care Center in Sylmar.” The reporter then gave all the pertinent details about the event.

The reach of the TV coverage combined with the influential demographic captured by the billboard added up to some decent gross rating points. When the print media started requesting interviews, Dan called a press conference. Two hours later the newspaper reporters and Val’s TV crew were assembled in the kitchen at the Care Center. Monsignor Matthews emerged from a room at the end of the hall and walked into the kitchen. He was wearing his power cassock, black with dark red piping and buttons and a little skullcap. “Thank you for coming out on such short notice,” he said gravely. “I’m afraid I have bad news this afternoon …” He gestured for them to follow.

“This is Val Logan with a Channel Four News exclusive,” she said as she followed the Monsignor. “I’m at the Care Center, the San Fernando Valley care facility that is fast becoming a cause célèbre.”

Monsignor Matthews stopped at the door from which he had come earlier. He knocked gently. A second later he opened the door and showed the reporters in. Val and her cameraman shoved their way to the front of the crowd. The room had been transformed into a showcase of religious images. One wall was thick with representations of the Virgin Mary. Against the opposite wall was a small altar where Ruben was fervently lighting candles. Josie knelt at Peg’s bedside, conspicuously working a rosary. She was wearing one of Peg’s
older Dominican habits, its starched cornet extending like the wingtip stabilizer on a private plane. Ruth was next to her, draped in black, veil and all. All attention was focused on Peg. She lay in the bed, motionless, her eyes closed. She appeared to be hooked up to a life-support system. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Val whispered, “Father, how is she?” She thrust the microphone toward Dan.

“Not good,” Dan said as he made the sign of the cross. “Last night, around ten o’clock, Sister Peg lapsed into a coma.” Dan bit his lower lip before continuing. “There’s nothing we can do for her now but try to keep her dream alive … her dream to open a new Care Center … to continue her good work.” Beep. Beep. Beep.

As the newspaper guys scribbled their notes, Josie noticed Peg peeking out from her coma. Josie jabbed her gently with her crucifix.

“Do the doctors give her any chance of recovering?” one of the reporters asked. He didn’t have much hope in his voice.

Dan slowly shook his head. “They said it would be a miracle.”

T
hat night Dan did a short radio interview to plug the fundraiser one last time. He left the studio at ten and headed back for the Care Center, exhausted. As he drove across the Valley, he knew his time had run out. There was nothing to do now but wait to see what tomorrow would bring.