"On dinner? Or on catching up?"
Kit was already invisible around the corner. "I hope you don't mind a decent screw top, Temple. These small, arthritic hands can't manage impediments like corks."
"I know what you mean about impossible corks." Temple raised her voice to carry around the corner. Kit's apartment, like her own, encouraged shouting from room to room. "That's one thing I miss since Max has been gone."
Her aunt's head popped around the corner like a disembodied talking mop. "That's all?"
"I was speaking of minor advantages."
"Here." Kit scurried into the main room, two wine glasses filled within an inch of their brims. "I know, full glasses are gauche, but I loathe hopping up and down to refill glasses that could have held a decent amount to begin with."
Kit curled into the couch's tapestry pillows that turned a corner into a comfy curve, her slippered feet tucked under the hem of her caftan.
Temple suddenly noticed the soft brittle rhythm of a CD echoing off the hard windowpanes like insect wings beating a mass retreat. Temple recognized swing music from the forties, the mellow, jazzy jounce of the Big Bands.
"If only you had a fireplace." Temple sighed, rolling her head so the machine's circling cue balls massaged a different hot spot.
Kit gestured to the illuminated city panorama. "Consider it cold fire."
"I do love this place. I could write here. I mean, write something wonderful, maybe even fiction, gazing out the windows on Manhattan, it's great, unseen engine churning industrious cogs beneath the city's imposing architectural mantle . . ."
"Maybe I overfilled our glasses, after all. The wine is supposed to be red, but not florid. Don't glamorize cosmopolitan life. I pay a mortgage like everyone else. The super's never there when you need him or her, a self-protective woman needs to wear running shoes on the subway and sometimes we have garbage strikes, which in a city like this means it piles up on the curbs."
"No alleys with little cans for everybody, huh?"
"No alleys. And writing fiction for a living sometimes feels like you're in a dead-end alley and there's a garbage strike on all around you. The publishing business is addicted to turmoil and the outlook is always bleaker than last year somehow."
"Still, you can't say you haven't achieved something."
Kit nodded and sipped. "But I'm not what I came here for."
"An actress?"
"That game is even worse than writing. At least nobody can 'can' me because I gain ten pounds.
And that hasn't been easy, even with the edge of good genes. The years have a way of turning on you and all your dietary sins, and ticking out a tongue. Before you know it, you've gained ten pounds, and then another, if you're not careful."
"That's what I was afraid of. I'm seeing the weight issue front and center at the advertising agency. They're even looking a little askance at Louie."
"Of course, looking askance is the only way you can see all of him." Kit, hands held up like a moving frame, mimed a camera pan of the cat in question. "What a lug! A full yard stretched out from claw to shining claw, with his front feet flopping over the couch edge. Such a gigolo at heart!"
"Careful what you say. If anyone heard, the agency might invoke Louie's morals clause."
"Morals clause! For a cat? Claws I can buy. Morals? No."
Temple nodded soberly, quite an achievement considering that her glass was half empty already. She hadn't realized that she had been stressed out enough to chugalug a fine vintage screw-top like this.
"Same clause actors and athletes have to sign when they become national spokespersons, Auntie. If even a cat gets bad press, it could terminate the contract."
"If you sign up with these people, will there be a morals clause in your contract too?"
"I suppose so, although I'm not famous enough to be pilloried in public." Temple smiled wickedly. "But Savannah Ashleigh is. Her cat Yvette's already in hot water for an unplanned pregnancy."
"By a cat?"
"The father of the quadruplets is rumored to be Yvette's last leading man, previous to Louie."
"No! Stop the presses. Cats Shack Up in Las Vegas Love Nest. I can see the headline now."
After they stopped laughing, and Temple restrained the sleeping Louie from sliding right off the sofa, Kit retreated to the kitchen, returning with the wine bottle and a coaster.
"I'm beat too. Baby-sitting Rudy last night wasn't a piece of cake."
"The guy who played Santa needed baby-sitting?"
"Not exactly. But not too long ago he was a street person. It's easy to slide back into that life. That's why me and a few old acting friends try to keep him gainfully employed."
"Boy, acting must be worse than publishing, if you've got out-of-work thespians panhandling."
"It's not just that. Rudy's a Vietnam vet, and sometimes the nightmares come back. I mean, he won't hurt anybody, and never kids, but we have to keep him focused, especially around the holidays. Playing Santa seems therapeutic. I guess that's what Rudy did with the kids in Vietnam. Looking after them helped him forget the horrors of war. My pal Mitch got him an elf gig at a kids' party, and he's got more for the holidays."
"Vietnam! Kit, that was ages ago. I'm surprised he's not in retirement."
She looked amused. "Temple, darling, Vietnam was still going strong when you were in diapers. Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it happened before your lifetime."
"No, but it seems like such ancient history. International terrorism has become the preferred conflict of the eighties and nineties."
Temple held her glass with both hands as Kit leaned forward to refill it.
"You seem so hip," she explained to her aunt, "compared to Mom. I guess it's hard to realize how old you are."
"Thank you. I think. I'm several years younger than your mom, and I'd like to believe that living in a cosmopolitan city has polished off some of the hayseed hulls."
"Kit, I didn't mean to insult you. I was actually thinking about international terrorists."
"Commendable."
"Fighting them isn't such a bad thing, is it? "
"No, but how do we do it?"
"Not us. Someone. Maybe someone who has to do it clandestinely."
"Speaking of clandestine, let's forget terrorists and focus closer to home. You're edgier than when I saw you in Las Vegas, and when I last saw you in Las Vegas, you were almost the second victim of a murderer."
"Ooh, yeah. And then Max himself almost strangled me for getting into that onstage pas de deux with a murderer."
"Max is it now.'"
"Sometimes."
"Hmm. That what's making you edgier?"
"I'm not edgier. I'm . . . just burned out from my last case."
"Your last case."
"The Darren Cooke murder."
"I saw the Times obituary, but the death was ruled a suicide."
Temple shook her head mournfully.
"The official version is suicide," Kit tried again, "but murder is still suspected?"
Temple's solemn head shook again.
"Temple, for heaven's sake! I'll think you have palsy soon. Well?"
"The official version is suicide. The case is closed. That's all there is."
"But--?"
Temple shrugged gingerly. The shiatsu machine had done its work well. It still buzzed off target, slipping down the couch back.
"But the officials don't know what I know," Temple admitted.
"Which is?"
"Cherchez la femme."
"Your French accent gets comedic when you drink."