Douglas, Nelson - 2Golden garland

"Temple, don't pout. It doesn't become you. I've told you more about myself than anyone outside the network knows."

"Max, I'm afraid! Of what happened to you, of what could happen to you. I've never known a professional wire-walker before."

"Yes you have. We all are that at times. Molina, the deceptively ditsy Madame Electra, your friend the good father, even Midnight Louie."

"Deceptively--? The good father--? Max, what have you done now? That was privileged information."

"Nothing's privileged, only private for a time. I had him checked out. Needed to know."

"That's despicable. Unfair. Vile. I mean it!"

"That's my job, Temple, and part of my job is to protect you."

"Not at other people's cost."

"Always at other people's cost. If finding out happens to explain just why you're so protective of his past, why you can swear that 'nothing' happened, so much the better for me."

"Max. I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything for a while. I came to New York to see some people, find out if there was any realistic possibility of my withdrawing safely."

"From your . . . situation?"

He nodded, glancing at the cab driver beyond the battered grille. "We'll talk about it later. For now, let's just enjoy the ride."

A more unenjoyable ride she could not imagine, but Max pulled her against him and she couldn't resist the pull he exercised on her whether it was literal or not.

Temple surrendered to jostling along in the back of the fender-brushing, barreling cab, her head on Max's chest, even through the earmuffs hearing the thrum of his heart. She thought about them, Max in winter, with no hat, no gloves and an open coat. Herself, booted and bundled and gloved and earmuffed, and still cold.

She examined the chasm between them, more than style or temperament, and tried to gauge whether its depth and width had changed now that the burden of Matt Devine's priestly past was not hers alone. Through no fault of her own. Mea culpa. Mea Maxima culpa. Look at how she mixed metaphors now: Max was showing up in the fragments of religious ritual she had learned from Matt. Max the Inevitable. Matt the . . . Unforgettable.

Enjoy, Max had said, and she finally decided, quite deliberately, to do just that.

Temple smiled as her head bounced on the hard-muscled pillow of Max. Now getting overheated by outerwear in inner angst, she was also getting sleepy, very, very sleepy. That old Max magic was at it again.

The cab had stopped and Max had paid before she stirred to her surroundings.

"I said enjoy." Max was teasing her. "I meant relax. I didn't mean go comatose. Some date. Come on, sleepyhead."

She didn't bother telling him that this was the first time she had felt utterly secure in New York, but let him pull her across the cracked leather seat and out onto the sidewalk. There, the night cold revived her like refrigerated smelling salts.

The restaurant was a picture window of plate glass with one word scrawled across it that she couldn't read. Max swept her in a narrow door beside the window into a broom closet of a place crammed with tables and chairs knocking legs. Temple had a sense of being yet lower in Greenwich Village, maybe in some discreetly hidden yuppie soup kitchen.

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."