Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“This,” she said, “is truly Red Carpet bling. It’s exquisite. My God, I’m Julia Roberts!

“This is a ring,” he said. Corrected. “You’re you. It’s really two guard rings. It comes apart, see? The band is rubies, for . . . later. I saw it and saw you. That’s all.”

Temple was agape at the clever way the two halves of the ring separated to admit a band. A band of rubies for a wedding ring. What an exquisite thought, an exquisite execution, the epitome of every reason she loved vintage things, but Fred Leighton, jeweler to movie stars . . . that was way too much.

She said so.

“Listen. I’ve given triple that to African famine and Gulf Coast flood relief. You can wear it in good conscience.”

Of course he would have; that was why she’d always had to spur him into springing for the basic little comforts of American consumer life. But for her, he needed no encouragement. He went big.

Temple bit her lower lip (on which she should have reinstalled lipstick for this truly Kodak moment).

Beauty, the poet had said, is truth. Truth, beauty.

Who was she to deny the perfection of a beautiful gift, a beautiful moment, a beautiful mind, a beautiful heart, a beautiful hope?

“I don’t know quite what to say,” she said. Anyway.

She held up the corona of light, in her right hand, poised somewhere over her left third finger. Apparently, it was a Kodak moment to someone other than Matt and herself.

A flash exploded around them both, an aurora, a star going nova.

“Photo, folks? Visiting Las Vegas to celebrate an engagement and tie the knot? Your friends and family will treasure this moment as much as you do.”

Temple rather doubted that.

“Just twelve dollars.”

Matt didn’t doubt that at all but reached for his wallet. It was his night to pay, all the way. To pave the way.

The tiny elevator at the Circle Ritz was all theirs at this hour. The Midnight Hour. Monday night. Matt’s one night off from his late-night radio shrink show.

The shrink was in.

His finger was poised over the round black buttons with the white floor numbers mostly polished away by other fingers over many more years than they’d been on this planet.

“Floor two or three?” he said lightly. Temple still heard the strain in his voice. It was a momentous decision and it was all hers.

“Three,” Temple said. “I’ve got an aunt cluttering up my living room and a cat claiming my bedroom.”

“I’ve got a brand-new bed and no aunts or cats.”

“I know.”

“Is there a reason you’re huddling in the corner of the elevator?”

“I’m scared?”

“You’re scared?

“It’s a lot of responsibility.”

“Don’t I know?”

He took her elbow, steered her out of the small elevator car into the deserted hallway and down the short cul-de-sac to his door. Where he got lukewarm feet.

“Maybe some place more . . . unusual. Without a past. A hotel?”

“This is fine,” Temple said, trying not to zone out on the way the sidelight fell on his hair, making a blond halo of it.

Angels. They didn’t do carnal things like sex .

“Are you—?” he asked.

“Protected? Yes. Is that a sin?”

“That’s the way you are. You’re perfect. I’m not. Remember? I don’t want to hurt you. For what you are or for what you aren’t. You’re all I want.”

“Funny, I feel the exact same way about you.”

Inside the apartment, there wasn’t a soul around. Not even a cat.

Temple eyed the sculptural red fifties designer sofa she’d found for Matt at Goodwill. Danny was right that it had cost something to give it up to him, to insist he have it. She’d always kinda maybe thought in her wildest dreams they’d make it someday on that sleek suede surface. She’d always kinda maybe thought a lot of inadmissible things, inadmissible evidence, about Matt Devine. Before she’d known he’d been a priest.

And, heck, even after.

She sat on the red sofa knowing her peony of a purple taffeta skirt made her look like a human mushroom. She looked at her left hand with the movie-star-level estate diamond ring on it.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she told him.

She didn’t tell him that the day after the black dress interlude she’d hied herself off for testing. A small card that declared her free of HIV and other STDs now lay hidden in her seldom-used scarf drawer. She knew Matt came shrinkwrapped, so to speak, and didn’t want her virgin would-be bridegroom thinking about ugly realities on such a momentous occasion as first sex. She’d figured she was safe and had sniffled a bit when she read the results, pretty solid proof of her conviction that Max had never been unfaithful.

Matt was still trying to be supremely accommodating. He sat beside her. “If the ring’s too much or too much pressure, forget it.”

Temple knew that visible symbol of commitment would mean a lot to his conscience.

She stroked his forearm with that hand, watching the diamonds throw out serious sparks. “No, it’s beautiful. It just should be our secret for a while.”

She touched his lips with a forefinger.

He was watching everything she did with such dreamy pleasure she thought she could die happy right that moment. She’d forgotten what first love was like, but Matt was bringing it all back to her.

“I feel responsible,” she said.

“For what? Yourself? Me?”

“I’m the one who knows. I’m the brazen hussy. You’re the innocent virgin. I can take. You can only give. It’s not fair.”

He stood, took her hand, the right one, and drew her up against him as if they were dancing.

“Frank Bucek called me. I didn’t know he was in town.”

“I ran into him when he was here for crime business at the New Millennium.”

“He told me that you’d talked.”

“He told you we’d talked? I thought he had to abide by some confessional binding thing or something.”

“He only mentioned you in passing.”

“What I said . . . oh, no!”

Matt smiled. “Now I’ll really wonder. No, he just gave me two words of advice.”

“And—?”

“Nobody’s perfect.” Matt was looking down at her as if he didn’t believe that, as if he believed she was really, really perfect.

“I know I’m not. I’m confused. I’m a . . . worldly woman. I’d have an ex, that isn’t an easy, cut-and-dried thing, Matt. It’d be messy.”

“He wasn’t talking about you, Temple. He was talking about me. And I suddenly realized, in all my twisting and turning to do the one right thing, that I didn’t have to be perfect or do the perfect thing. That thinking like that was a kind of hubris. Selfish. That I only had to love you, as I have since almost the minute I met you, that I only had to want you, as I have since almost the day I met you.”

“What took you so long on the ‘want’ part?”

“So you were faster?”

“Oh, yeah. It was simultaneous, on my part.”

“Really.” He pulled her closer. “From my book, I understand that that’s the best way. Simultaneous.”

“Oh, Matt. There are so many ‘best ways.’ ”

“I want to have them all, with you.”

“Even if I’m not ready for marriage right out of the box?”

“I figured something else out, brilliant solver of other people’s problems that I am. If I do what’s best for you, I can’t hurt myself. I’ve been searching for some overarching spiritual love all my life. And it’s there. In other people. Person. Don’t be guilty, Temple. I’ve wasted way too much of my life on that.”

He pulled her close enough that she could tug his tie loose.

He was undoing her back zipper, short as it was on her halter-top prom dress.