Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“Kit. I . . . have a marriage proposal.”

Kit’s hands clasped at her breastbone, the universal theatrical gesture for joy. “Max has proposed? I knew it in New York! I feel like a mother hen whose chick has landed in her own safe little nest!”

“No. Not Max. Matt.”

“Matt?”

“You remember. You saw him when you were out here for the romance writers’ convention.” Temple had not sounded very sure.

“Matt.” Kit was visibly gathering her improvisational skills. “Ah, yes! Blond, dreamy. Ah . . . I thought he was a friend.”

“Where do you think proposals come from?”

“I don’t think. Temple, I’m sorry. I’m in a fantasy fog most of the time. Acting, writing. Not reality. I do indeed remember Mr. Caramel Smoothie. Frankly, I’d assigned you to Max and felt free to . . . well, appropriate Matt for one of my books. So. He’s proposed. Isn’t he . . . forbidden fruit, somehow? I remember importing him as the luscious and of course forbidden first cousin in . . . er, Bayou Bewitched , a Louisiana-set romance.”

“ ‘By you bewitched’? Quite the obvious pun, Auntie.”

“You’d be surprised how many don’t get it. How old are you anyway?”

“Thirty,” Temple announced in tones of doom, not mentioning that thirty-one was just around the corner, suddenly next summer, like July.

“A chick fresh out of the egg.” Kit frowned. “But it’s true. I followed my acting career just long enough to lose out on the first round of romantic link-ups.”

“Women,” Temple quoted a magazine article, “who don’t marry by thirty-five are unlikely to.”

Kit winced and drank wine. “I can’t deny it. So. You wanna get married?”

“Actually, no. I mean, I would, but mainly I want a guy who loves me and vice versa, who I can trust and try to get through this mess called Life together with. That’s awful sentence construction, isn’t it?”

“Horrid. But the sentiments are pretty universal. I did like Max.”

“So did I.”

“Did?”

“I thought he was Mr. Right, like there is any such mythical beast, but . . . it’s not that he doesn’t want to commit, he can’t. Not with his job history.”

“And Matt can.”

Temple nodded. “Now. Except that he comes with all these religious strictures that aren’t mine.”

“You’ve always liked him.”

Temple rolled her eyes, Mariah style, left over from the Teen Idol competition. “Ye-es”

“Maybe some of those strictures have something to do with that.”

Temple nodded. “He’s so honest you sometimes want to kick him in the shins. He really does care about what I think and feel. He’s willing to sell himself down the river if I’ll give him a shot, though he didn’t tell me that part. I figured it out. And he’s really hot for me, but he’s aggravatingly able to control it.”

“Grrrrowl . Take it from Auntie, that is not a problem when it comes to female satisfaction. Would that they taught that in high school instead of abstinence and friends with benefits.”

“What are friends with benefits?”

“Are you out of the talk show circuit! Girls are preserving their virginity, all right, but by giving out oral sex to boys as a substitute. Can we say ‘not a fair trade-off’?”

Temple couldn’t say a thing. Girls always lost something, somehow, in the dating game, and she was very glad not to be the mother of one. Yet. Maybe she could become a Red State conservative and marry Matt yet. She and Kit finished their wine and conversation, yawned, and hugged each other good night.

Temple’s mind and emotions were in turmoil despite several glasses of wine. A woman’s future options were much rockier than she’d suspected. Her own immediate options made her stomach churn with an unhealthy surfeit of emotion and indecision. Max. Matt. Matt. Max. It was coming down to a duel in the sun. Her heart and libido were giving her emotional whiplash. She took a Tylenol PM to help her to sleep, and so to bed.

It was past two in the morning, so Max did the Midnight Louie trick. Push, bounce, click and the left French door from the balcony let him into Temple’s living room with barely a sound.

Unlike the White Rabbit, who was too late to say hello/good-bye, Max was the black cat burglar. He knew it would soon be too late to say hello/good-bye/good night, so he wanted to explain himself to Temple before he became entangled in the inexplicable again. Perhaps for a good long time.

The parking lot lights cast shadows over the living room’s familiar topography: potted Norfolk pine in corner, pale sofa grazing like a White Buffalo in the middle, and various tricky tables and lamps to tiptoe around.

Max was almost around the sofa when it sat up and took notice.

“Ahhh!” it said, switching on the floor lamp at its right end.

There was Max, in the spotlight again.

He blinked to see a pale imitation of Temple: small, indignant, red hair faded to strawberry-blond in the bright light pouring down on it. What was she doing sleeping in their living room? Temple’s living room?

When the glasses appeared and pasted themselves to the bridge of her nose, he realized that this was not Temple. She wore contact lenses now.

“Max!” Not-Temple exclaimed in a hushed, hoarse voice.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing here?” they each intoned like a chorus of two.

“You remember me,” the woman said. “Aunt. New York. I’m the one who stuffed my sexiest nightgown into Temple’s overnight bag for your Manhattan reunion. Like it?”

“It didn’t survive the reunion. That nightgown was yours?”

“I’m flattered, however vicariously. I haven’t lost lingerie to an encounter in twenty years. Remember, it comes with full visitation rights.”

“Never forgot that for a moment. So is Temple here?”

“Inner sanctum. Midnight Louie’s out and prowling. Your path is unobstructed.”

“Except for you.”

“Oh, don’t let me stop you. Not that I think I could. Or would. I’m an ex-actor. We all shared close quarters in my heyday. Want me to yell hey when the day is dawning?”

“You are an unnerving woman.”

“Thanks! Now I need my beauty sleep, which you won’t notice the results of unless we meet in daylight. Ta-ta.”

The woman stretched out an arm to turn off the lamp and roll herself into the sheets. Max was now night-blind. Again. He felt his way to the bedroom door, which was indeed shut, and eeled inside.

Temple was asleep. His frazzled nerves suddenly smoothed out. She always loved being awakened in his own special way.

He slipped into the sheets beside her, managing not to awake her. His fingers barely touched the familiar contours of her face. It turned toward him, in her sleep, the way a sunflower follows the sun that names it.

She was rousing now. In the sense of awakening.

“Max,” she muttered.

“Yes,” he said. “Shhh”

“I had a dream. You were falling!”

“Falling here. Into your arms.”

“No! A long, long way. Max!”

She was way too lost in some nightmare. He pulled her into his arms, but she was still falling, her arms and legs jerking and flailing.

“We’ll crash,” she cried. Under his fingers, her face was a spasm of furrows.

He couldn’t erase them. Eradicate the dream. Overcome her fears with the mere nearness of his presence. Not anymore. His fingers felt her eyelashes batting like bird wings.

She struggled up in the bedclothes, sitting.

“Max? You’re really here?”

She still sounded drugged with sleep.

“Really.”

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you. What? Oh. Yeah. That white witch is at the New Millennium.”