"I can understand it. Common military service forges strong bonds. Were they stationed overseas, or what?"
"Vietnam," Kendall said ominously, in low tones. "The older generation doesn't like to talk about it. We weren't around then, but I understand the worst trauma was afterward, coming home, when the peaceniks had turned the country around and returning vets were called baby-killers to their faces."
"Really!" Temple, shocked, recalled her aunt Kit telling her how much she didn't know about the sixties just last night. She'd have to check some books out of the library.
Kendall nodded. "Not that Daddy served in an enlisted man's unit. He was attached somewhere else, but he must have crossed paths with the other men at some point. All the older men in that war were scarred somehow. Dad and Tony and Victor never talk about it. That must have been especially hard on Victor and Tony, they were second-generation Americans, gung ho to serve their country. Then they come home and they're treated like criminals. Nobody in your family was involved in Vietnam?"
Temple frowned. "I'm the youngest of five. I guess Dad was a family man. Were men actually being drafted then?"
"Oh, yes. Daddy's generation doesn't talk about it, but they were so hush-hush we kids actually got curious enough to look it up. The demonstrators were hippies who claimed that the draftees were all poor guys, while kids from wealthy families got college exemptions. When I heard about that, I became even prouder of Dad. He's never said it, but he didn't have to go to Vietnam. That's why Victor and Tony are so loyal to him. Apparently, he was higher in rank, but he stood by them."
Temple nodded. All this was Greek to her. It was scary what you didn't know about your parents' pasts, as if you assumed they began when you did and you both accumulated only common memories. Was one of her brothers or sisters a Vietnam baby, conceived simply to get a deferment? She didn't know what the rules were then, but they could have shaped her entire life, and she would never even know it. The sixties was such a crucial decade. She did know that. What were her parents like then? Maybe nothing like she thought.
"Your cat's gone," Kendall said.
Temple looked again at the chimney. Not even the dangling stockings were stirring, and Louie was nowhere in sight.
"Look!" a childish voice halloed. "Lookie. Kit-ty, Mom-my!"
The real "Mommy" looked up. Temple followed her example. Oh, Great Marley's Ghost! Louie wasn't gone. He had just sprouted wings. He now perched atop the cotton-batting simulated snow edging the chimney top, black as a lump of coal dropped from the cardboard Santa's pocket as he sat laughing in his sleigh above it all.
The eight tiny reindeer looked much bigger now in comparison to Louie's silhouette, and their glitter-dusted hooves seemed ready to kick Louie off Santa's territory.
"Louie get down."
An adult chuckle sounded in the quiet room at Temple's command. "That cat is just a natural center of attention."
The speaker was Gerald, the senior member of The Client, but Temple's business instincts had decamped for the moment. How was Louie going to get down? And would he? Cats were notorious for scaling neighborhood Mount Everests like Sherpa guides, then stalling at the top until the fire department sent a ladder unit to get them, which most fire departments wouldn't do nowadays.
No firemen were in attendance here, and admen did not strike Temple as a particularly athletic breed.
"Louie, you come down," Temple ordered, fire in her eyes and voice.
He looked at her, then considered the assembled humans staring up at him and found the size and awestruck quality of the audience good. So, he promptly obeyed her.
"Amazing!" The Client, all four, spoke as one the moment Louie vanished down the chimney.
All eyes now fixed on the painted black hearth. The room was so still, despite the children, that everyone heard a discreet thump as Louie's four feet touched floor. He ambled out, looking right and left, as if noting the presence of subjects.
He finally stopped at Temple's feet, looked up with sober green eyes, and meowed plaintively.
"Aaaah," said the crowd.
She wanted to strangle him, but there were too many witnesses. So she picked him up and patted his head, which probably suffered from mediocre doming, but neither Temple nor Louie would know, and neither would care.
"You could have fallen," she said, infected by the maternal concern radiating like winter heat all around her.
He responded with his most contemptuous look. So much for the power of parental love. Now she knew how mothers of teenagers felt, especially in public.
The din and festivities were resuming. Glasses clinked, children whined for Santa and every third one seemed to be dropping a glass. Luckily, the glasses were all made of plastic, but the green stuff was as sticky as Temple had surmised when she joined some other women in bending down to blot it up with cocktail napkins.
As soon as she was done, she collected Louie again, who had remained beside her. She shifted his weight to glance at her watch.
Only two more hours to go before this command performance was over. Two hours!
Louie watched her with a wrinkled brow. Then he glanced back to the scene of his most recent attention-getting device.
"You've done chimneys before, Louie," Temple whispered. "I'm surprised at you, repeating an effect. That's hardly professional. Max would never do it."
Louie growled softly and pushed away with all four feet, effecting his release. He stalked to the corner where the Ashleigh cats were still attracting too much attention. Louie's arrival diverted their fans. While Solange and Yvette repaired mauled ruffs and tails, Louie sat like an offended sea cow and allowed the children to run their sticky fingers over his shoulders and pull his tail. He flashed Temple a wounded look.
Now what was that all about? she wondered. But not for long. The Client was descending on her en masse, begging to hear about Louie's reputed crime-fighting exploits.
Temple wanted to be at Aunt Kit's. She wanted a bubble bath and peace and quiet. She actually wanted to be home in Las Vegas, where it was warm and where the only hubbub to interrupt tranquil days of desert sun and forty million tourists breezing through town was the occasional nearby murder . . .
But this was Showbiz and Louie was her baby. She gritted her teeth and recounted his adventures, embroidering shamelessly.
Midway through a riveting account of the Houdini seance during which Louie had performed his first chimney trick, the room's lights flickered, then dimmed.
A buzz of speculation interrupted Temple's tale. She looked around. Louie was nowhere to be seen, but of course there was a crowd of wall-to-wall people in the room.
On the Santa wall, a spotlight illuminated the painted hearth and mantel. Bells rang out, not deep-throated church bells, but the tin-selly jingle of horse-bridle bells. Poe's bells of "crystalline delight" that "tinkle, tinkle, tinkle in the icy air of night." Kind of reminded Temple of Yvette out for an evening on a New York sidewalk.
For a moment it did feel cooler in the room, then a bent, red-garbed figure came bounding out of the fireplace, his false basso laugh booming good cheer.
"Well! What a fine convention for Santa! And what a splendid tree. Shall we see who's been naughty and nice this year? Have you got a chair for these old bones . . . and a cup of cocoa and maybe a cookie?"
"Oh, yes, Santa," crooned the children, running to the buffet table to scoop up fistfuls of cookies.
Santa sprang, most lively, to the stuffed armchair positioned near the tree.