Is nothing sacred? Obviously not. How sad to see the state into which two grown single women can descend when the only male influence on the premises is feline. I plan an early retirement to the bedroom and the word processor. Hey! Maybe I can write a happy ending to Miss Temple's love life.
Chapter 37
Merry Maximus Christmas
"A mouse must be stirring," Temple called to Kit as she raced for the apartment door. "No one else would still be out and about this soon after Christmas."
She swung the door open wide, infected by the season and perhaps a bit too won over by the idea that New York City was a village.
What was out and about wasn't a mouse; it was a man. And not just any man, like a milkman or a rent collector or an IRS agent; it was Max Kinsella.
Temple felt her face freeze in astonishment. With a red muffler, a fake -fur-lined brown duster, arms full of packages and melting snowflakes dewing his sleek dark hair, Max looked like a recent escapee from Minnesota--or a Dickens tale--not from Las Vegas.
"Ma-ax--" Before Temple's inflection had committed to ending in cither an exclamation point or a question mark, Max had swept her into the warmth within on an invisible current of icy outdoor air. Temple shivered as she was enveloped in coat, packages and a cold-lipped kiss of greeting that quickly turned subtropical.
She might have stayed in this cozy, tented atmosphere indefinitely, except that a parrot high in a balmy palm tree atop snowcapped Mount Everest was screaming for attention.
"Temple!" Kit's voice was a delighted screech. She loved surprises, and this looked like a good one. "You're being assaulted by outerwear on my very doorstep. Desist, you rogue London Fog!"
Max's encumbered arms (Temple still in one's custody) spread wide in a show of innocence and greeting. "Merry Christmas! You must be the cousin Temple is visiting."
"Flatterer," Temple growled beneath her breath, trying to elbow out from under cover of the voluminous coat.
Max's smile never faltered as Kit closed in to inspect him.
"You must be--" Of course she knew; she had glimpsed him and Matt Devine at the Crystal Phoenix casino, and an ex-actress never forgot an interesting face, let alone two.
"A bottle of Dom Perignon for the charming hostess." From his bottomless folds of coat Max produced the usual oversize bowling-pin shape wrapped in silver foil and tied with scarlet ribbon.
"The Mystifying Max," Kit pronounced after unwrapping the gift and eyeing the bottle's ornate label.
The label must have impressed her, for she found her widest, warmest smile and added her blessing to the obvious.
"Come in, and don't import any more of that icebox air than necessary." She peered at Temple still lurking in custody with intent to dither. "So nice of you to keep my niece warm on the threshold. If you close the door behind you, I believe you will find her nicely thawed."
Temple glared at Kit. "Don't promise anything you can't deliver personally."
But her aunt was already floating down the long gallery, bearing the champagne to the kitchen. "She'll hang up your coat."
Temple had already sprung open the almost-hidden door in the foyer wall.
"White cliffs of Dover, with a secret door. Interesting." Max, eyeing the lofty rooms, shrugged off the heavy coat.
" 'Cousin.' " Temple shook her head.
"Never hurts to ingratiate oneself with the relatives. Especially when one comes bearing immoral propositions."
"They look like ordinary Christmas presents to me."
"Very ordinary. No magic tonight."
"You? Resist the casual sleight of hand? Hah. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"It's Christmas. We're both out of town. I thought a formal call wouldn't be out of order."
"I meant in New York. I know how you found me here. You asked Electra where I was staying."
"My trade secrets--useless." He sobered. "I had business. . ."
Temple, silent, stretched to push the bulky coat onto the lone unoccupied wooden hanger. Max, who was good about helping with small struggles like that, didn't.
He did lean a hand on the closet wall, penning Temple into a tete-a-tete. "Almost New Year's. I think it's time we discussed the future."
She backed into the huddled coats.
"I don't."
"Champagne-cracker needed!" Kit's impressive stage projection called from the living room. "Raffles, are you available?"
Max, unlike himself, snapped to attention to obey the call of masculine social duty, leaving Temple stuffing his coattails into the clustered mass of dangling outerwear.
"I hate winter," she muttered to the abused coats, punching them into place.
By the time she emerged, red-faced but calm, Kit and Max were in the living room holding flutes of champagne in which bubbles twined upward like crystal strands of DNA.
A lone flute sat atop the Lucite coffee table for Temple to claim.
Midnight Louie reclined on the broad windowsill to the left, artistically arranged between two pots of pink poinsettias. On a side table, Kit's small gilded Christmas tree twinkled against the silent night's billions and billions of kilowatts making a private light show of upper Manhattan.
"Killer location." Max turned to lift his untouched glass to Temple's. "To the New Year."
Temple stood numbly by as he and Kit chimed glass rims in turn.
At last she understood what had seemed different about Max, what had made him an almost-stranger, and had turned her strangely shy--and even abrupt.
He wasn't wearing his evergreen contact lenses. His eves were paler, and their true color, which she had never glimpsed before, blue.
She turned to confirm this astounding fact with another witness to the preblue Max: Midnight Louie, who was tonguing a forefoot while giving Max an evil eye of authentic emerald-green. He looked as dubious as she felt, but then, he always did. That "Oh, yeah? You and what other Doberman?" look was a patented feline expression donned with the first fading of kittenish baby-blue eyes. Cats learned early, it seemed, that the world is mean and man uncouth.
"Temple? How do you like it?"
Her aunt's question reminded Temple to sip the champagne. Her opinion was pointless. She couldn't tell a bottle of Andre's from a Dom Perignon. "Fine."
Max had sat on the low sofa at Kit's invitation, legs akimbo. His usual black had brightened for the holidays: he wore a cable-knit burgundy sweater over a black silk turtleneck and slacks. Temple smiled at this somber concession to the holidays and took the last seat left on the sofa, beside Max.
Kit's white walls, golden floors and black leather sofa felt harsh and coldly modern for the first time. The bare windows seemed as bleak as a factory's, and the light extravaganza beyond them a cheap trick, a chintzy set, a mere advertisement for the real New York-New York: the hotel and casino about to open January 3 in Las Vegas.
Temple had no reason to find Max's natural eye color unsettling, or significant, except that it was the sole thing about himself he had always controlled religiously. The one small secret that had seemed the biggest betrayal of all. The theatrical green eyes were a key part of his philosophy of "loud" being a better disguise than naked. Why had he discarded the contact lenses now? More disguise? Or was he making a statement, and, if so, what and to whom?
Ah, Max.' Thy name is eternal question mark.
"I want to borrow Temple," Max told Kit. He sounded as if he were talking in a rain barrel. He turned and took Temple's hand, still addressing Kit. "Do you have anything planned that I'd interfere with?"
"Only a cocktail party tomorrow night at six. They're in again, even among the younger set. A farewell party for Temple. You must come."