"I didn't think about any of this. They never taught it in school, except very generally."
"These are not things that are taught in school."
"But now you're writing historical romance novels. Isn't that a tad unliberated?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. What women do is always labeled unimportant unless it's in imitation of what men do. Then it's labeled ball-busting."
"Kit, you shock me."
"It's the wine talking. Want some more?"
"Umm ... just a little. I think I see what you're saying. Thanks to AIDS, women have a chance to say no to exploitation."
"If they'll take it. And I don't think being scared too silly to live is an answer either."
"Then what is?"
"Women making sure that sex is safe. I do respect the longevity of your arrangement with Max. But it wasn't a marriage, Temple. He left, you're free to love again."
"Nothing's ever really free." Temple looked at her glass, surprised that it had refilled almost to the brim. She sipped it down to below the spill level. "Kit, I probably wouldn't tell you this without having had the wine ..."
"Yes?" Kit looked politely out of focus at the couch's other end.
"And I'm only telling you because you live on the other side of the country and you'll probably never visit Las Vegas again, or meet any of the principals."
"Principals? Are you talking like a lawyer, Temple?"
I'm hedging like a lawyer, because I'm about to break a confidence, and I wouldn't do it, except I don't know what to think and I could use some advice from someone who doesn't know anybody who's involved . . . personally, that is. Except for me, of course."
"Of course," Kit assured her in far too well enunciated syllables.
Temple had committed the impossible and didn't notice. "You see, the reason Matt's such a dicey romantic partner--"
"Yes?"
"--is he's a priest. Or was until very recently."
"Priest. The Power and the Glory kind, not the pleasant chap in England with the collar and the manse and the wife and kiddies?"
"You always go to plays. Yes, the Graham Greene Catholic kind, only he doesn't drink. Except socially a little. And not as much as this," Temple added, squinting at the contents of her glass because the claret color looked so much richer a little out of focus.
"Or do anything, if I've got the religion right." Kit carefully set her wine glass on the cocktail table and put her hands on her akimbo knees. In the long caftan, she resembled an Eastern guru a bit, and Yoda from Star Wars a bit. The hiccup was just a small distraction.
"You are telling me that the man is a virgin."
Temple nodded.
"And looks like that?"
Temple nodded.
"Wait a minute! He is heterosexual?"
Temple nodded.
"But he never--?"
Temple nodded.
Kit leaned back and sighed. "How can you be sure of all the afore -saids?"
"I've been around a little, in my modest post-sixties way."
"Then grab him."
"It's not so simple, Kit, as you were just reminding me a while ago. What brought him to this position has to be dealt with. Then, he's still Catholic, and if you think about what that religion doesn't let you do ... if I married Matt I could have fifteen kids! Easy."
"That's right. No birth control." Kit leaned forward. "You could be sterile."
"I think the- word for women is 'infertile,' and I wouldn't bet on it."
"He could be infertile."
"I think you mean sterile. And I wouldn't bet on that either"
"Does he want fifteen kids?"
"I don't think so, but he'd have to abandon his entire faith, not just the priesthood, to have anything like a normal sex life. So all is not gold that glitters."
" 'All that glisters is not gold,' " Kit corrected her absently.
Temple recognized the corrected quote from The Merchant of Venus . . . Venice!
"All right." Kit grew stern when she drank. "Basics. Who do you love?"
"I loved Max madly . . . until he left without a word."
"And, and ..." Kit's left hand flopped in circles, but no name came. "And the other guy?"
"I like him tremendously. I respect him." Kit's face was growing grim. "And I'm madly attracted to him."
"Hmmm. If I were to cut one in half, which would you prefer?"
"That old Solomon trick doesn't work with two objects of affection, Kit. Do you want me to make some coffee?"
"And ruin our wonderful session of girl talk? No way. Let's see. If Max came home to stay and wanted to get married and didn't want to have fifteen kids, could you be happy with him?"
"Probably, but--"
"Then it appears to me that what Matt needs is right in this room."
"I beg your pardon? I thought I was happily married to Max, who no more will roam?"
"You are. But I have the perfect solution to Matt's problems."
"You do?"
"Sure. Me."
"You?"
"Too old to get preggers, dear. Just what the poor lad needs. Nice experienced menopausal lady with ambition. Not too over the hill. I even look a little like you. What more could he want?"
Temple picked up her fallen bedroom slipper and heaved it at Kit.
Unfortunately, it hit Midnight Louie, who started awake and tore off the couch and across the cocktail table, which overturned Kit's carefully placed glass, which spilled its red, red wine all over Kit's handsome area rug, which Kit and Temple spent the next half hour soaking and soaping in this vale of tears.
Whether they were tears of rue or tears of laughter only the wine remembers.
Louie had retreated someplace secret and invisible where cats go when people are too below them to notice.
Chapter: Letter to Louise, Part 1
Being the Meditations of Midnight Louie in New York City
Ancient history is only interesting when it is one's own. I cannot tell you how many son-of-a son-of-a's have strutted their hour upon the stage of life during the thirty-something years my two little dolls had under discussion recently.
I mean, when I say I go way back, I go way back to Egyptian times, but only thanks to the intervention of countless generations between then and now.
It is so unfair. My species is superior in many ways, but has definitely been short-sheeted in the longevity department. There are even some spiders that live as long as our eldest examples, big hairy black spiders too, like tarantulas. There are birds even, who outlive us by decades. I refer to the parrot family, which not only hangs around obnoxiously long, but are prized for their aping of human speech. This does not mean that they have the brains to shell a peanut, only an ear for idiocy and the knack of repeating it, which is how some very respectable human careers got started, if you pause to think about it.
But I am in a sober mood after lying about absorbing the sturm und drang Miss Temple Barr and Miss Kit Carlson are slinging and sloshing around. Perhaps the Christmas season produces reflections of a nostalgic and familial nature.
Me, I thought the point of the holiday was getting time off work, a chance to collect lots of presents and an excuse to eat oneself into a stupor. And look at me, I have been uprooted and transported to a city so big that I must be carted about from pillar to post for my own physical and sanitary safety ... I am engaged in the most crucial competition of my new-born performing career,... and I am not offered so much as a saucer of wine sauce after my long hard day at the office.
So I slink off when the opportunity arises, which it does pretty soon after Miss Kit uncorks her shockingly mediocre bottle of wine. I retreat to Miss Temple's and my room, which, in addition to the presence of a nice queen-size bed for the both of us, features a computer setup by the window.