Temple listens to the lull of the dial tone until the telephone wrangles at her to hang up.
Max is even more mysterious than before. She used to love his spur-of-the-moment social style.
It seemed spontaneous, fun. Now she understands that his sudden whimsical turns were dictated by grave considerations she never saw. Still, Max found the shoes; he deserves to celebrate his feat. Her feet. The Midnight Louie shoes.
*****************
Temple is ready by six-thirty and discovers that she can't sit down because Midnight Louie has left fine black hairs on every horizontal surface. She's wearing the ankle-length, stretch-velvet dress that never saw the lights of the Crystal Ball, and it's black anyway, but she doesn't want it to be furry too. Max isn't used to cat hair.
Tonight she's pinned a black enamel panther-head pin with emerald-green eyes a couple inches below the dress's soft turtleneck. Except for the Shoes, that's her only jewelry. She should be appropriately dressed for anything from Caesars Palace Court Continental restaurant to Three O'Clock Louie's at Temple Bar. She used to get so excited wondering where mysterious Max Kinsella would take her; now she's just worried. Should he be doing this? Is it safe? For him? For her?
He rings the doorbell, like a good lad.
She realizes she's never opened the door for him in this place. It does feel a little like prom night, only any flowers she'd get from Max would be paper.
He's wearing a matching black turtleneck, not velvet, and black blazer, slacks, shoes.
She can't help smiling. "We look like we're going to a mime's funeral."
"Except for your shoes." He looks down and she turns, the flared skirt swinging out.
"Spectacular, but I hope you don't think the real Midnight Louie should have a night out too."
"No. He's resting comfortably in the bedroom."
Max wanders in, looks toward the room under discussion. "I suppose he regards it as his territory now."
Temple thinks, and decides to leave that unanswered.
Max turns. "Ready?"
For what? "Sure."
She picks up her only evening bag, a silver minaudiere on a black satin string.
"Coat?"
"How cold can it get?" She holds out her arms in their wrist-length sleeves.
"You'll be all right."
She hopes so.
Locking the door behind her seems ostentatious, especially when she drops her key-heavy chain into the shallow black mouth of the tiny purse.
On the way down in the elevator Max leans against the polished wood. Temple wonders what kind of wheels he uses now.
It's cooler and darker outside than she had expected. In the parking lot, her aqua Storm is parked next to Electra's pink Probe; together they look like an ad for a Miami Vice rerun. Next to them sits a new Taurus that looks ... black.
Max opens the passenger door. "Gandolph's."
"Can you just use it?"
"I'm his heir," Max mentions after he gets in and pulls on the seat belt.
"Won't that be awkward? Won't you have to show up in court eventually?"
"No." Max doesn't explain further, and his voice, his profile don't encourage Temple to probe.
She stares ahead, thinking that the evening feels all wrong, that the Taurus isn't Max and it isn't her, it's a dead man's hearse. It's a dead relationship's hearse. The little purse sits on her lap like a dead thing, heavy and still. She curls her hands around it, not being used to carrying small purses, or sitting in a well-upholstered sedan with velour upholstery, or feeling like she's in a magazine ad for something.
Only when the car makes several turns does she look at Max.
"Ah, is this place we're going to on the west side?"
He nods. She'll have to get used to that ponytail in profile. It doesn't look bad, just different.
Like the car. Temple is terribly afraid that they are heading in the wrong direction, but doesn't know how to say so, so she says nothing, not even when the Taurus turns into the parking lot of the Blue Dahlia.
Disastrous! Temple is speechless. Sick. Shocked. Does not dare say anything. Then she glances cautiously at Max, and suddenly suspects that he knows exactly-- exactly --what he is doing. He grins at her like Sean Connery as James Bond, insouciantly pleased with himself, with her.
"I just discovered this place. Quite unusual."
Temple nods in a daze, trying not to notice the place in the lot where she and Matt collapsed with laughter at the idea of Molina the singing policewoman.
This is getting interesting. Just how much does Max know about the Blue Dahlia, and who sings there sometimes, and when Temple might have been there and with who? Whom?
Whoever.
She is demure as he lets her out like a large little gentleman.
They are like two coiled springs trying to guess when the other will make like a Slinky and flip ... right for the stairs and a hasty exit.
They enter the restaurant, are shown to a table for two lit by the small coral-shaded lamp she remembers from last time.
"This is darling," she remarks, as she probably did last time.
"It's fairly new. Since my ... sabbatical."
"Is that what you're calling it?"
He settles into the chair, which he has to push back from the table to accommodate his legs, as usual. "It's as good a term as any. Do you like it?"
He means the restaurant, of course. Temple looks around. The small dance floor is empty, but a few musicians are shaking out their arms and their instruments under the spot lit stage area. A lone stool sits at the side, unoccupied.
Temple strokes the cold metal purse on the white tablecloth. She should probably tell Max they have to leave now, that Molina could come in at any moment, but when she looks at him he seems so at ease, so in control, so sure of himself that she can't quite warn him.
Besides, then he'd ask her how she knew Molina sang here and she'd have to explain she'd been here before, which would ruin the "surprise" aspect of the evening, always a big thing with Max. And then he'd ask with who--whom?--not out of jealousy but because he always wants to know everything about everything; that's what makes him a master magician, always knowing every situation inside out.
And she'd have to say it was just a dinner out with Matt, hating that "just," because that seemed to put Matt down and he didn't deserve it.
Better to let Molina nab Max and let him break himself out of jail afterward, Temple decides morosely, than to ruin the present with an autopsy of the recent past.
"You seem more serious than usual," Max says.
"Just worried."
"About what?"
"Our being out in public like this. Your being out like this."
"Let me worry about me; I've been doing it for a while." Max's smile could cut through fog.
"Come on, you want to show off those shoes, don't you?"
He takes her hand to draw her up and onto the tiny parquet dance floor.
No one else is there, but Max is used to solo numbers in the spotlights. The musicians have indeed got it together by now and are playing something familiar and forties and vaguely Brazilian (fascinatin'rhythm).
Max can dance and, as he's proving tonight, has even mastered some ballroom moves.
Temple thinks that she is doing the samba or something similar, but it doesn't matter what she thinks she's doing, because Max's lead is so smooth and so strong that she is doing just the right thing no matter what. She had forgotten how easy it was to dance with Max, because she is so small and he isn't. He's right; they'd be great on stage together if she could stand to be locked in cramped cabinets and wear fishnet hose. Well, maybe she wouldn't have to wear fishnet hose...
Max can slow-dance too, and Temple is swung out and drawn in, whatever the music and moment dictates, until she stops worrying and looking out of the corner of her eye to see if the stool is occupied yet or if any yellow-haired ghosts are watching from the sidelines.
They are of course making a spectacle of themselves, exactly what Max shouldn't be doing for his own good, but then her shoes might be drawing a tad of attention away from him.