"Thanks, counselor."
"I'm thinking, if this man is as famous as you say, he could be the one who calls me."
Temple slapped a hand over her mouth in shock, which did no good, because she managed to talk through it anyway. "Ooh, I never thought of that. I was so caught up in my part in the prewritten drama, I couldn't see the sex addict for the Stardust. You're right! He's exactly the kind of guy who could be calling you. Thanks a bushel and a peck, Ned."
"Ned?"
"Never mind. I feel a lot better now that someone else has profited from my little walk on the wild side. Do you know when you got his calls?"
"We keep a log at ConTact, yes, but this guy even called from out of town. The dates wouldn't necessarily jibe with Darren Cooke's Las Vegas schedule, even if it is he."
"There must be some way to check it out."
"I'm sure you'll have some insight into a method any second now."
She looked hard at him to make sure he wasn't razzing her, but he was smiling, so she did too.
"You've had a banner weekend," she said. "First you nail Cliff Effinger to the wall in oatmeal-and-charcoal and then you figure out I've been brunching in Bluebeard's castle."
"It's been quite a weekend, yeah."
Matt's smile had faded. Temple picked up her tepid mug of cocoa. "I'd better microwave those rolls, and a cuppa chocolate for you."
As she rose, Louie picked that moment to make an imperious change of position. He lofted himself onto the coffee table atop Cliff Effinger's preciously recalled features.
"Lou-ie!" Temple screeched, tilting her cocoa and almost adding chocolate freckles to the already mottled Effinger mug.
Matt jumped up to corral the cat, but by then Louie was showing them the underside of his tail as he darted to the floor and out of sight.
"Is it all right?" Temple babbled. "How much did it cost? Can she do it again if need be?"
"Looks okay." Matt shifted the drawing away from Temple's mug. "Couple hundred. And I don't want to see her again if I don't have to."
"Oh, gosh, the paper's separating." Temple felt the sick feeling of any hostess whose guest's goods have been damaged in her house. "Matt, I'm sorry. Louie almost never makes sudden moves like that; he's just too big."
Temple fingered the peeling corner, and saw the paper curl back. "Wait! It's only two sheets on top of one another. The drawing's okay. Worthy of any post-office wanted wall. See?"
She carefully held up the top sheet to demonstrate. Then she spotted the portrait under it.
"Hey. It's you!"
Matt moved her cocoa mug to the coffee table's far side. "Apparently."
Temple sat again. "A real drawing, not a sketch. Good too. Not signed, though."
"She did it to warm up," Matt muttered. "She said. I didn't even know she was doing it."
"And she just gave it to you?"
"Well, I paid two hundred for . . . him."
"Matt, this drawing bugs you. Why?"
"I feel like the Native Americans, I guess. It's a stolen image. I don't know what to do with it."
"Frame it."
He frowned. "I've got better things to do with my money."
"And send it to . . . your mother."
"For Christmas or her birthday--" He visibly brightened at the idea, so Temple guessed that he was always at a loss for an appropriate present. "Maybe --"
"Or--" she went on. He waited hopefully for her next good idea, and she couldn't resist.
"Give it to a girlfriend to frame."
"You don't really want it?"
"Why not? It's obvious that you don't, which means you won't take very good care of it, and it's too nice to waste. She really did a fabulous job for an off-the-cuff session. Even caught that cute little worry line at your left eyebrow. Come on, Matt, you have to feel a little bit flattered!
You look mah-velous! I bet she thought so too."
He reached for the paper. "I don't want it--"
Temple kept it in custody.
One corner tore off.
She stopped smiling and he suddenly sat back on the sofa, far from the two pulp-paper portraits side by side on the coffee table.
"I haven't had a photograph taken since I left St. Rose of Lima. I'm not used to seeing myself.
Or to seeing how other people see me."
"You need to get over that," Temple said seriously. "You can't know somebody else until you know yourself. You really need to be a teensy bit vainglorious about being so handsome. It's only human."
"I know that. I know what I look like. But I don't like seeing what it does. It's not just the portrait, it's the . . . context."
"What happened?"
"Nancy Drew is right. You know something happened. You're worse than a mother or a ... a nun."
"Thank you. Actually, after my almost-close encounter with Darren Cooke, it's rather reassuring to be compared to a mother or a nun. I was beginning to think I was a bimbo."
"What did you really resent about that, Temple? That he thought you were cute?"
"Aha, that's just it. I didn't have to be cute, I didn't have to be me, I just had to be female and to be there."
"So if Darren Cooke had fallen instantly in love with you, it would have been all right."
"Well, better. But he didn't, and it wasn't."
"How do you know he wasn't genuinely attracted to you?"
It was an honest question. Temple thought about it. "His reputation. His lack of constancy."
"But that can change."
"Not for him. He's a confirmed womanizer. Woman, generic term. Not me, not Savannah, not his lovely wife. Who, by the way, is a famous model."
"How do you know? How do you know what someone is feeling, and why and how genuine the emotion is?"
Temple spread her hands. "From living and watching, and trying to sort out the fake from the real in yourself as well as in others. From being a fool sometimes, and being too afraid to be a fool other times."
Matt nodded at his portrait. "You think she liked me."
Temple studied it more intently. "I think she was attracted to you. That's why you shy away from the evidence. She made you look a little too sexy for your own peace of mind."
"But not yours."
Temple grinned. "Never. So who, or what, is she? And what did she do to you?"
"Nothing, I imagine, which only makes it worse. Do I get any of that cocoa or not?"
That sent Temple to the kitchen to warm up her now-cold cup and make a second mug. By the time she came back, the two drawings were rolled together, both safely out of sight.
"I mean it, Matt. I don't want you abusing that drawing. Most of us never get captured in pen and ink."
"Maybe it's just as well. It's funny. You know what she said her business consisted of? Family portraits and criminal reconstructions. Pretty extreme, huh?"
"It's like Chekhov said about happy families: they're all alike. I bet she enjoys putting criminals on paper more."
Matt looked at the rolled drawings. "Speaking of extremes, we both have had similar reactions to extremely different situations. Maybe you should tell me about life and love and sex in the secular world. I think I'm ready."
Temple tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "It'll be what I think, what I've seen, and there won't be anything religious about it."
Matt nodded. He knew what prescription he needed when he heard it.
Temple grinned. "You're not really ready, but you never will be if you don't figure this out.
Okay."
She sat forward in her usual presentation posture: outwardly composed, professional, possibly even a tad perky. Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show had hated perky almost as much as he had hated spunky, but what was a single working woman to do but put a bright face on an uphill struggle?
Recalling that show brought back memories of her and Max, bad ghosts to haunt a serious discussion with another man in another place and time.
Temple took a deep breath. "Look at us. We're both unmarried, relatively young--will you grant attractive? Me, at least?"
"Oh, yeah! You're fine .. . you're ah--"
"And you're searching for words other than 'cute.' "