"Of course. But this evening--?"
"Temple is as free as a rolling stone."
"Dinner?" he asked Temple directly at last. "I know a little restaurant.
Max always knew a little restaurant and now Temple knew why. Undiscovered, out-of-the-way places were the natural haunts of secret agents, counterspies and moonlighting magicians.
She nodded. Her right hand was wanning nicely in his, and, in her left hand, the champagne tasted like ginger ale. She set it down on the thick plastic tabletop.
"Come on, I'll get you a good warm coat." Kit rose, took Temple's free hand and led the way to her bedroom, whispering all the way.
"Why on earth are you acting like a zombie? If that had appeared on my doorstep as a post-Christmas surprise, I'd be doing the mazurka on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. As a matter of fact, he just did. Heck, I'll go out to dinner with him if you won't."
"There are buried issues," Temple said cautiously.
"There are always buried issues. But not between Christmas and New Year's, sweetie pie. Please! Perk up. Smile. It can't hurt that much to look at him. Try not to be crabby to the man, at least. It looks too eager."
"Too eager?"
"Here's my best holiday coat." Kit wrapped a circle of sheared acrylic around Temple like a mother dressing a child for the skating rink.
"Kit! It's red! I never wear red. My hair--"
" 'Tis the season to never say never. And wear these fluffy little earmuffs. Won't hide your hair. Nothing is less romantic than hidden hair. You have gloves, don't you? In that awful quilted down thing in the closet?"
"I didn't have much notice to buy anything warm, and the down thing isn't that bad."
These gloves go with the earmuffs. See. The same white fake fur on the cuffs. Don't you look adorable. Little bunny rabbit! Too bad you have nothing but this monster tote bag to drag around. No matter. Have a great time. Don't worry about keeping me up too late. I'll have Monsieur Louie to keep me warm. Ooh-la-la!"
"Kit! I'll put the damn gloves on myself, thank you."
"Good. Snapping out of your malaise, I see. Be crabby with auntie. See if I care. But be kind to Max."
"I am always kind to animals."
"Grrrr. Off you go."
Kit propelled her back to the main room where Max was waiting at the prow of the view, blending into the night's black velvet backdrop, his back to them.
"Here she is. I'll get your coat."
He turned at Kit's voice, his expression still abstracted from thought. "I left a few things under the tree. House gifts."
"We'll open them tomorrow night." Kit shepherded her charges to the foyer, then whisked Max's heavy coat from the closet as if it were made of thistledown and held it up for him like a very short butler.
He dipped deeply at the knees to accept her unneeded assistance and straightened so quickly the coat whirled around him like a cape. "Shall we go?" he asked Temple, his eyes still blue.
So they went into the cold, snowy night. Temple was glad she was so bundled up that virtually nothing--and no one--could get to her. Not even a magician.
Nobody on wheels in New York City had ever noticed her when she stood six feet out in the slushy winter street and beckoned frantically for a cab. Max hesitated near the curb and lifted one arm like a rather lazy conductor. Six cabs topped by unlit signs sped toward them like a racing field of greyhounds exclusively clad in yellow.
Somehow one always sank down into New York City cabs. Down into a slick worn seating surface polished by rear ends covered in Givenchy fur coats and polyester pants and worn blue jeans and designer leather. Long-gone occupants had left an aura of stale, backstage fumes behind them, along with a melange of Brut and Poison and Opium and the sweetly nauseating hint of the occasional double-malt scotch vomit.
Max didn't bother with gloves, even in winter, yet his hands never cooled. Maybe he didn't want to hamper the tools of his trade, those magically nimble fingers. Now they clasped Temple's icy, gloved hand.
"There's no place like New York," he said. "The energy, the crowds and the rush. It's the toughest audience on the planet."
"I didn't think you were performing anymore."
He leaned back in the lumpy seat. "I'm always performing. You know that."
"Yes, and you were very good tonight with Aunt Kit. She practically pushed me out the door into your clutches."
The mention was mother to the reality. Max's clutches tightened around her.
"Temple, don't pout. It doesn't become you. I've told you more about myself than anyone outside the network knows."
"Max, I'm afraid! Of what happened to you, of what could happen to you. I've never known a professional wire-walker before."
"Yes you have. We all are that at times. Molina, the deceptively ditsy Madame Electra, your friend the good father, even Midnight Louie."
"Deceptively--? The good father--? Max, what have you done now? That was privileged information."
"Nothing's privileged, only private for a time. I had him checked out. Needed to know."
"That's despicable. Unfair. Vile. I mean it!"
"That's my job, Temple, and part of my job is to protect you."
"Not at other people's cost."
"Always at other people's cost. If finding out happens to explain just why you're so protective of his past, why you can swear that 'nothing' happened, so much the better for me."
"Max. I don't know what to say."
"Don't say anything for a while. I came to New York to see some people, find out if there was any realistic possibility of my withdrawing safely."
"From your . . . situation?"
He nodded, glancing at the cab driver beyond the battered grille. "We'll talk about it later. For now, let's just enjoy the ride."
A more unenjoyable ride she could not imagine, but Max pulled her against him and she couldn't resist the pull he exercised on her whether it was literal or not.
Temple surrendered to jostling along in the back of the fender-brushing, barreling cab, her head on Max's chest, even through the earmuffs hearing the thrum of his heart. She thought about them, Max in winter, with no hat, no gloves and an open coat. Herself, booted and bundled and gloved and earmuffed, and still cold.
She examined the chasm between them, more than style or temperament, and tried to gauge whether its depth and width had changed now that the burden of Matt Devine's priestly past was not hers alone. Through no fault of her own. Mea culpa. Mea Maxima culpa. Look at how she mixed metaphors now: Max was showing up in the fragments of religious ritual she had learned from Matt. Max the Inevitable. Matt the . . . Unforgettable.
Enjoy, Max had said, and she finally decided, quite deliberately, to do just that.
Temple smiled as her head bounced on the hard-muscled pillow of Max. Now getting overheated by outerwear in inner angst, she was also getting sleepy, very, very sleepy. That old Max magic was at it again.
The cab had stopped and Max had paid before she stirred to her surroundings.
"I said enjoy." Max was teasing her. "I meant relax. I didn't mean go comatose. Some date. Come on, sleepyhead."
She didn't bother telling him that this was the first time she had felt utterly secure in New York, but let him pull her across the cracked leather seat and out onto the sidewalk. There, the night cold revived her like refrigerated smelling salts.
The restaurant was a picture window of plate glass with one word scrawled across it that she couldn't read. Max swept her in a narrow door beside the window into a broom closet of a place crammed with tables and chairs knocking legs. Temple had a sense of being yet lower in Greenwich Village, maybe in some discreetly hidden yuppie soup kitchen.