No reservations; the aproned waiter led them to a tiny table for two slammed against the wall between thronging tables for six, both full of animated, preppie diners.
"Drink?" asked the waiter without preamble.
Temple thought she should be careful not to order anything too heady. But she wanted something warming, and exotic. She almost wished this were a touristy Oriental place, where she could order a Tokyo Typhoon with three kinds of rum and two kinds of liqueur, which came flaming with skewered fruit and a combustible paper umbrella.
"Gin, scotch, vodka, wine or beer," the waiter clarified with impatience.
Max was waiting for her.
"A martini," she decided. The quintessential New York drink. "With an onion."
"No onions," the waiter pronounced with the same absolute indifference at being found lacking that all service people in New York share.
Temple shrugged good-naturedly and waited to see what exotica Max would come up with.
"Scotch on the rocks." He was not asked if he preferred something other than the house brand. Temple was sure that he did.
They had to hunch across the tiny table to hear each other because of the racket. The slight wooden chairs threatened to tip over under the burden of their heavy outerwear. Despite the crowding and the din of many voices percolating into the air, the restaurant seemed chilly. They kept their coats over their shoulders. Besides, where would they have put them?
Temple gazed around happily. She had expected a slick, upscale restaurant with "decor" and a wine list and "nouveau" plates of next-to-nothing in the food department. This was infinitely better. It felt like ducking into a neighborhood restaurant on Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis, where they had met and courted, if people still called it that.
Their drinks only came after the table of six near them got their entrees, and then the waiter lingered, pencil poised, hungry for their food order. And there was a wine list. A wrinkled half-page listing surprisingly pricey by-the-glass offerings.
Temple asked for the shrimp alia something or other, a pasta dish.
Max requested the chicken Parmesan and was firmly told that he would much prefer something other of the chef's invention. He shrugged.
"That's so rude," Temple whispered across the foot of space separating them. "Who does he think he Is?"
"The chef."
"The chef?"
"And the owner."
"He wait! tables and tool
"Not simultaneously."
"And for this we have to pay eight dollars for a glass of wine we never heard of before?"
"It's sure to be excellent."
"Sure!"
Temple toyed with the short stem of her wide mouthed martini glass. The martini glass's very silhouette had been an icon of sophistication since the twenties. A dozen Art Deco graphics featuring its rigorous sculptural form, so geometric, flipped through her mind. And no onion, just the usual salty green olive. New York City, where they seemingly had everything, was the one place where they made a point of not giving it to you.
Max was reading her Midwestern mind, and laughing at her.
"It's called chutzpah, and it was invented here."
"Like the martini?"
"Not like the martini. Not in a bar. On the street and out the window and up your avenue."
Temple lifted her precariously filled glass in a toast. "To the unexpected joys of not getting what you want."
"I hope not," Max muttered into his scotch.
"Is it safe to tell me what kind of a deal you worked out with the network? Gosh, it sounds like you toil for CBS or something."
"Not a bad cover. Well, I saw Uncle Walter," he added with elaborate caution.
"The gray eminence."
"Retired, but still active. Our founder. He was quite sympathetic to my ultimate goal, and thought it possible, even though it's never been done before."
"Leaving the network."
"Not alive."
Temple winced and chugalugged gin as smooth as French perfume, and about as pungent. "God, Max--You're not kidding, are you?"
His eyes glittered across the table, bright as swords. "I never kid. We agree that the only way is to clear up these casino deaths. Mine, and your friend's."
"He's got a name."
"Matt. Sort of flat and predictable, isn't it?"
"Rather like Michael. An archangel. I'd think you two would have something in common."
"Yes, but she's a bone of contention. A rag and a bone to pick and a hank of red hair of contention."
"I hate that expression."
"Good. Now we're off the subject of the late Father Devine."
"He's not dead."
"To hear you tell it, he is, or weren't you being absolutely frank?"
"I was, and he isn't. Can we talk about. . . Uncle?" She giggled, thanks to the martini. "Remember that old show that's on in reruns, like Mary Tyler Moore. The Man from Uncle. That's what we can call you. The man from Uncle Walter."
"Glad you're enjoying yourself." Max picked up the table knife, which was oddly oversize, like all the silverware. He cut along the padded white tablecloth, a phantom incision with a dull blade, but precise nevertheless.
"Uncle suggested that it may be necessary to work with... Matt. No full disclosure, of course. And he agreed that you will have to be kept informed, might even turn up something on your own, as a liaison between myself and Matt."
"Me, in the middle? And no full disclosure for me either, right?"
He nodded. "Can't be. Trust me."
"Ah, you must be working for the government, after all. In Max we trust."
His warm fingertips touched her cold ones on the foot of the martini glass. "Look into my eyes. What do you see?"
"They're so different. That color. You don't look like yourself."
"Sometimes the truth is less attractive than the illusion."
"It's not that blue doesn't become you ... it hasn't become you yet. Do you know what I mean?"
His fingers tightened on hers. "That I'm a stranger, again. I'm trying to be as honest as the laws of survival allow me."
"If things are as dire as you say, then you shouldn't have anything to do with me, for my own sake."
"That's true. That's why I want you to keep going to the mat with Father Matt. Get good at self-defense, Temple. Take it seriously. I suggest a pistol range too."
"What do you want? A mini-Molina?"
"I want you as tough on the outside as you are on the inside. If we're to be together, you'll have to be."
"Together?"
"That's another thing I've tried to work out. We can't... live together as we did before, but we can come darn close. I want it back, Temple. I want back everything we had before I had to leave. I'd never had that before, and I don't want to give it up."
She sighed, and gazed at her half-empty martini glass. Or half-full, as the popular philosophy insisted on looking at it. The gin had slightly blurred the edges of her senses and sensibilities. A murmur of voices around, the warmth of the encroaching tables and chairs and sagging coats made Temple feel both oddly safe and oddly removed. Was this Max's immoral proposal? Clandestine cohabitation instead of openly living together, as before? Yet he was offering her more honesty in the truly closed portion of his life and past, where danger intersected desire at a perilous angle.
"I told you I was faithful all the months that I was gone," he said softly. Yet his voice carried all the way to her heart.
"You don't seem to doubt that, and I thank you. But I have to admit that it wasn't as difficult for me to be true as for most men. I've lived whole stretches as celibate as a priest, an honest priest anyway. Too dangerous, for me and for the woman. Why do you think James Bond has his Bond girls, a new one for every novel? They don't last, Temple. And in real life, Bond wouldn't either. And if he did, he wouldn't keep seducing some pathetically gorgeous girl to her inevitable end. When I broke the rules and took you with me to Las Vegas, it was because what happened between us was so true and powerful, I finally couldn't say no. I'm weary of being on the edge alone. I want a partner. I've had it with performing solo. In my magic act, in my life and in my secret profession. You're involved, whether you wish it or not, whether you still love me or not. We might as well make it semiofficial, and fight for what we both want. If we still both want it."