Temple lifted it off the small velvet tab that held it upright. Although made like lace molded from hot lava, it was a strong, solid design, broader than she would think a small hand could carry off. The dying light of the cheesecake (or whatever) flambe made it into a glimmering raw vein of ore: fugitive, elusive, like Max himself.
She lifted it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Which finger should she try it on? There was only one; even recognizing that was a commitment she hardly dared think about.
She slid the band over the first knuckle of her third finger, left hand.
It fit like magic. Not too tight or too loose. A Cinderella shoe of a ring. She would expect nothing less from Max. She showed him her hand, which he took, his face a textbook picture of anxious concentration. He hadn't been sure it would fit (though he knew better), he hadn't been sure she would like it (though he hoped so). He certainly hadn't been sure she would wear it.
He glanced up, and in this dim restaurant, his eyes were light, but of no color, as water nullifies the hue of whatever it reflects into a translucent memory.
"Will you come home with me tonight, Temple?"
She never even thought to ask where home was.
Chapter 38
Encore! Encore!
"It reminds me of the Algonquin," she observed as they moved past the cozy lobby to the old-fashioned front desk with its pigeonholes of room keys behind the clerk.
"So would a lot of small hotels of this age in New York," Max said. "This one is quieter than the Algonquin."
He asked for the room key, standing on her left, her bare, beringed hand in his, as it had been since they had left the restaurant in a cab.
Temple's fingers weren't cold any more, heated in the furnace of Max's grasp. He took the room key and its old-fashioned wooden plaque in his left hand as smoothly as if it had been his dominant right; eerily flexible, Max Kinsella, and in moments they were huddled before the gingerbread brass grille of the elevator, waiting for the single car to waft them upward.
"Still cold?" he asked, bending his head so she could hear him.
"Not exactly," Temple answered with admirable understatement.
The elevator grille, and then the doors, opened. A wizened old man in a uniform, a hunchback, a wizard, opened the grille tor them.
Max filled the small elevator like a giant, and their separate and entwining emotions suffused it like an aphrodisiac, Max crushed her into a long, tortuous kiss against the back wall. The old man's neck was too stiff to turn and see, but Temple sensed him smiling into closed wooden doors.
Max thrust a tip into his hand as they left the car. Temple had never heard of anyone doing that, but the operator said "Thank you, sir and missus. Merry Christmas to you too," right out of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
"Poor man thinks we're married," Temple said, feeling fraudulent and anxious to get reality on record.
"I don't think so."
The room wasn't far down the narrow hall with its ancient brocade-pattern paper in gilded trellises that gave a sense of greater vistas beyond, and yet of confinement.
"I've got to call Kit and tell her I won't be coming back tonight."
"She knows."
"How do you know she knows? Yes, she's pretty hip for an aunt, but she might worry."
"She might worry more if you did go back tonight."
"Oh, really. That sure of yourself?"
"Of me, maybe. Of you, never. Just of her."
"I'll call."
"Fine. Now do you want to come in, or not?"
"Of course I do." Temple turned around when she was in the room. Small, high ceiling, high bed, lots of mahogany furniture from the forties, once splendid, and still pretty spiffy. A narrow door to a closet. A narrow door to a bathroom. And probably a hundred and eighty dollars a night, as a single. Oh! She was an illegal guest. A smuggle-in. A New York wetback.
"Temple. We've been here before. This is nothing new. Calm down."
"Where's the phone?"
He pointed to the bedside table, and to one of the closed doors.
"A phone in the bathroom? In a place this small?"
"They pride themselves on modern conveniences."
"I'll dash in, then."
She dropped her tote bag on the floor, and her coat and earmuffs and gloves, or Kit's rather, and vanished through the indicated door.
All white tile, with that ancient octagon-of-white-tiled floor grouted with black. Twenties. The phone was a wall model. Brand-new. She punched in Kit's number, glancing at her watch. Almost midnight. Going to get the old girl up . . .
It was answered on the first ring. "Hello." Kit, no doubting that husky contralto.
"It's Temple."
"No kidding."
"I just wanted to let you know that I. . . we .. . wouldn't be making it back to your place tonight."
"No kidding."
"Kit! You're my aunt."
"That doesn't make me dumb, does it? Don't answer that."
"Oh, Kit. I... I don't know. I'm not ready ... I just have the dopey clothes I had on at your place and--"
"Tut-tut. Look in that ludicrously large tote bag of yours, Cinderella."
"Tote bag?"
Temple opened the bathroom door an inch. "Max," she said sweetly, "can you just hand in my tote bag? Thank you." Temple grabbed it and kicked the door shut. "What do you mean 'look'?" she demanded of the phone.
"Just look."
Temple pawed through the usual flotsam of her bag and felt something filmy snag on her fingernails. She dredged out a great deal of sheer black chiffon.
"Kit! What is this?"
"An example of a postmenopausal woman's optimism. Don't do anything in it I wouldn't do. I expect a full report whenever. Within the bounds of good taste, and close relatives, of course. Bye, dear. Sweet dreams."
The phone droned at her. Temple pulled and pulled and pulled black chiffon out of her bag until she felt like a magician doing the scarf trick. Well, Kit and she were the same size, and this certainly had to be better than second-best undies . . . and who knows what those European Mata Haris had worn just to the beauty parlor?
She peeked out a few minutes later, relieved to hear the homely drone of the television set on low. Only one small bedside lamp lit the room besides the eerie glow of the TV screen.
She ankled out, casual, aiming a comment at the man in the bed.
"It's all yours. The bathroom, I mean!"
Why did resuming a love affair after an interim feel so much like starting one all over again?
A hand stretched out from the bed. She mounted it, and this high, narrow, old-fashioned bedstead required mounting.
"Guess what's on?" Max's profile was directed toward the TV. How . . . domestic. How . . . easy.
"What's on?"
"Mary Tyler Moore reruns."
"Really? It must be weird to be an actor and see yourself as you were thirty years ago."
"Must be."
Max had one hand on the remote control, and one hand on her. Men! God bless 'em.
Temple snuggled down next to him, and sighed.
His free hand trailed through a stupendous excess of sheer black chiffon at her hip. "Must have caught something exotic in there."
"From the forties, probably."
"Forties noir."
"Exactly."
The remote control clicked, and the TV went black, forties noir black.
Temple woke up in the night, hearing the mechanical wail of an ambulance or a police car. For a moment she panicked, not recognizing the shape and shadows of the room. Everything was dark except for a blot of white shadow at the big old window. She reached out in the bedclothes, touched a figure, sleeping.
The white blot of window was a spotlight. Temple stretched in the comfortably rumpled covers, realized she was missing something, and finally found a heap of black chiffon on the floor.