Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Temple poured the punch--it was indeed a lurid, red-pink shade--into two plastic cups and offered Matt one.

"Temple," he said, "you're creative and wonderfully crazy, but--"

"Shhh. This is our prom night. The one you never had, and the one I had but shouldn't have. We don't get many second chances. Listen to that music."

"I don't recognize it."

"You will. I specially recorded my all-time favorites.

Maybe some of them are a little chronologically off, but, hey, they're classics."

Bob Seger's "We've Got Tonight" was unwinding slowly.

Temple held out her arms. "Let's dance."

Matt stood paralyzed, an untasted cup of Teen Time punch in his hand. "I ... I don't dance."

"Right. You do martial arts. And the martial arts are designed to keep people at a distance. Dancing isn't." Temple stepped closer, took his plastic cup and put it on the car hood. "Do you . . . shuffle?"

He looked down at their feet, at a dimly visible desert floor hard and sandy, just like a hardwood floor sprinkled with cornmeal for no-slip dancing. Perfect, Temple thought. If only I can bring it off. She put her left hand on his right shoulder. Then you do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself about. She extended her right hand, elbow crooked, wrist cocked, palm up, like a magician or an emcee presenting something. Voila!

"It isn't hard if you try," she softly quoted her current martial-arts instructor.

"Temple--"

We've got tonight, the Bob Seger classic promised, who needs tomorrow? Matt took her hand. The center of his palm was only slightly damp. Better than dweeby Curtis Dixstrom already.

Temple led. For a man who could dance over a poolside mat in dazzling defensive moves, he was a statue on the dance floor, or the desert floor. She had expected herself to lead all the way.

She made sure her shiny purple shoes carefully bracketed his shuffling feet without puncturing toes and listened to the music, moved to the music.

The beat quickened into John Mellencamp's rhythmic teenage anthem. All right, hold tight. Who ever knows if they're doing it right? Amen. Forever and ever amen, as in a country song. No country music unwound on Temple's tape, just soft-rock classics, just distilled teenage angst and ecstasy, just hope pure and simple.

" Stand by Me" segued into ''Sometimes When We Touch," with all of its impassioned lyrics and instrumentalzation. Temple loved her setting, her lights, action, camera, but she was beginning to feel a teensy bit foolish, despite her determined intention not to. Here she was, dancing with a handsome cigar-store Indian, playing with fire and ice, interfering in something she hardly understood. . . .

Matt's hand suddenly moved to the back of her waist, which he had avoided so far.

Temple held her breath.

He caught her to him, crushed her to him. As embraces went, it was convulsive and awkward, and it took her breath away.

She dared not move. The singer sang, the tape ran on, the moon shone at the same steady rate, her heart beat well above her aerobic target zone, her face was forced sideways into his shoulder, her fragile gardenias were getting bruised by his chin; she could smell their battered fragrance flying free to perfume the whole damn desert ....

He stepped back, away from her. She felt like a fool. A failure. Tears stung her eyes. You can't go back, and you can't take anyone with you, not even for their own good. Other people's "own good" often destroyed them, and you as well. She was sorry, so sorry. . . .

Matt looked down at her, as if he had never seen her before. He wasn't touching her anywhere at all now, and the gulf between them was more than a few years and different sexes and different parts of the country and different cultures, different backgrounds ... it was endless, depthless.

He looked down at her, the moon burnished his blond head, he leaned down

And Temple saw, realized

Temple was back there where innocence began

He was going to kiss her

She knew it

It was probably his first kiss

It was hers

And the moment was perfectly innocent and scary and sweet and she had forgotten everything adult she ever knew; she was just amazed and grateful

And it happened

It went on forever and for not long enough

Their lips touched and that was all

And nobody expected anything beyond the instant

And it was magic.

Again,

Chapter 39

Aftermatt

"Dinner was great," Temple said primly in front of her apartment door. "The restaurant was very understanding about our car breaking down in the desert, and we weren't that late."

Matt nodded agreement, still disoriented by the unexpected evening and trying not to show it. He had been trying not to show anything all night, though the moment of the kiss had slid almost naturally into another song, another shuffle, and then Temple had gathered up her memory-lane props and suggested they try the restaurant.

"I had a wonderful time."

She was saying the stock teenage line as if she meant it, smiling up at him with the gardenias moon-white against her flagrant hair. He would never forget the scent of those gardenias against his chin, storming his nostrils with their heady, honeyed scent. Had she planned even that when she pinned them to her headband? He was beginning to recognize that Temple was a peerless organizer of special events, from public-relations campaigns and murder investigations to ambushed emotions.

"It was the Perfect Prom, Matt. Trust me; I'm an expert on imperfect proms. Perfect. And they almost never are."

"It was a little late."

She shrugged. "I'd better get in, or my folks will be blinking the porch light. They do that kind of thing."

He glanced at the eternally lit carriage lamp beside the door, wondering if he should kiss her again, kiss her goodnight.

He didn't want to, not on the brink of this threshold so identical to his own, in these familiar surroundings, under the glaring light. . . .

Matt took her shoulders--bare, a foreign surface, an intimacy-- and bent down and kissed the top of her head. It was his Perfect Prom, too.

Temple smiled that smile women have sometimes, the one that is accepting and undemanding, and slipped inside her already unlocked door.

He was surprised a few moments later to find himself standing by the elevator, dumbly waiting. Usually he walked a single flight; tonight he moved in a numb cocoon. Father

Hernandez flashed into his mind. He would have to keep in touch with him; he was responsible now for the secrets that he knew and kept, not only for Father Rafe's sobriety, but for his innocence.

He walked off the elevator without remembering being on it and let himself into his unit.

"What the--?"

An island of items sat in the middle of his bare floor, as if a visiting child had piled some toys there: an ivory plastic tray filled with grayish sand and a slotted spatula. A set of stainless-steel dishes, one filled with water, one with a mound of noxious-looking green pellets. A plastic jug with a label reading "Pretty Paws." A box labeled "Free-to-be-Feline." He looked around.

A lean little black cat reclined on his Goodwill sofa like a pagan idol, front paws stretched long before it, golden eyes regarding him with the aloof interest typical of the breed.

Matt bent to retrieve the white envelope atop the Free-to-be-Feline and read the note inside.

"Electra managed the transfer while we were out dancing. Give this nice kitty a chance! Cats are quiet and clean, cheap, and make great companions--and Louie is major miffed about another set of paws around the place. Her name is Caviar, but you can call her anything you like. Pretty please! Temple."

Matt looked back at the cat, who suddenly leaped off the couch and approached him with mincing, silent steps. She walked like a runway fashion model, each long leg slightly crossing the other with every step.