By now Louie had emerged from durance vile and was regarding the Max-occupied sofa with loathing, but definitely not fear.
Max regarded Louie in turn. “Thirty-two dollars seems generous.”
“Oh, come on, guys! Get over it! Louie, sit on the other end of the sofa, there’s plenty of room, even for you. Max, just sit. Don’t move a muscle. If you stir, Louie may not go up on the sofa.”
“This is mentioned to encourage me to play statue?”
“It’s my sofa and if either of you want to sit on it you’ll just have to get along.”
Even Louie seemed to understand this last threat. After giving Temple a long green stare over his black shoulder, he stretched to pointedly sharpen his claws on the nubbly fabric. Then he leaped atop the arm farthest from Max and began smoothing the saw-toothed dishevelment of the hairs along his spine. Presumably the presence of the Mystifying Max had turned his usually sleek coiffure into an instant Afro.
“Okay,” Max told Temple, “now that we’re friends”—the two were five feet apart—“I’ll let you tell me about your court date before I tell you about the court date I’ve just avoided. So far.”
“Really.” Temple regarded the two black figures on her sofa with the satisfaction Roy might take in a pair of white tigers’ going to their proper stools. “Well, first I’m going to get a glass of wine, then I’m going to take my shoes off, and then I’m going to sit down.”
She headed briskly to the kitchen while Max took belated stock of her shoes, a beige suede pair of pumps apparently judged sober enough for a court of law.
He checked the cat, which was glaring at him while whipping its tongue over its muscular shoulders and showing its teeth in the process. At the moment, Louie reminded Max of the disapproving father of a teenaged daughter.
Not that Louie could possibly know what fatherhood was all about, having the morals of an alley cat.
Temple had not offered Max any refreshment, alcoholic or non, which meant that she was in a ruffled mood. Despite her air of celebration—zip-a-dee-doo-dah—not everything was going her way.
Temple always tended to micromanage when she was under stress, even cats and lovers. Nobody had ever said she wasn’t a brave woman, and her recent excursions into crime-solving proved the point.
So Max sat back, and waited. Once Temple had settled down, he would get his chance to astound and amaze. He always did.
Temple pulled a single, stemmed glass down from her cupboard—Max could wait on himself, he knew where everything was—and tried not to notice how pleased she was to see him here.
Pouring the red wine into the glass, she let her shoulders relax. Even getting her money today couldn’t soften that judge’s on-camera tongue-lashing yesterday, the sour topping to a very sweet day otherwise. Maybe they’d cut it for the actual broadcast. She couldn’t even remember what she’d said during the parting interview, she’d been so stung by the charges Judge Geraldine Jones had hurled at the end.
She, an irresponsible person? A bad pet owner? She hadn’t asked for a cat, gone out looking for one, or for a dead body, over which she and Louie had met so propitiously almost a year ago.
When neither one of them had panicked, she knew that they were made for each other. And did Judge Geraldine Jones have any idea of Louie’s remarkable intelligence and enterprise? He was not an ordinary cat. You couldn’t keep him penned up inside. She knew you—she—should. Everybody else should with every other cat. Except Louie. Who would annoy Lieutenant Molina and contaminate her crime scenes if he were confined to the condo? Who would bail Temple out of hot water, in which she was so frequently immersed, through no fault of her own but nosiness?
The fact was that Louie was not an ordinary cat, and he could not abide by ordinary rules. And Temple had never expected to be a cat owner. Hah! What a contradiction in terms that was. One did not own a cat, one cohabited with a cat. On its terms.
Rather like Max.
Why did anyone put up with either one of them?
Buttressed, she came back out into the living room. Why? Well, they were handsome devils, no doubt about it, and so much alike they should be blood brothers.
Temple sat on Louie’s half of the sofa. Actually, it was the only vacant human half, since Louie was still holding himself aloof on the sofa arm. Nothing can be more uppity than a cat with a point to prove.
“So how was your day in court yesterday” Max said genially.
“Do you want to get yourself a glass of wine first?”
“No, thanks. If we’re going out to celebrate I’ll save it for later.”
“We can go out? In public? Together? Really?”
“If Louie lets us. He looks exceptionally disapproving at the moment.”
“I mean, you don’t have to…lurk?”
“I always have to lurk, Temple, but I think we can risk the occasional public foray.”
“Gosh, we haven’t eaten out in a real restaurant since…”
“Since Michael’s in New York.” Max took her hand, her bare left hand. “When I gave you the ill-fated ring. You did say that opals were unlucky.”
“You did say that was just superstition. I’ll get that ring back someday. I know I will.”
Max only smiled and lifted her fingers to his lips. “Your day. Remember?”
Temple had almost forgotten, but she kicked off her pumps…had to dig out something snazzier for dinner tonight…and kicked off her tale of indignities.
She stopped just short of the judge’s searing lecture.
“No wonder Louie’s so pleased with himself,” Max commented. “He earns you twenty-five hundred bucks and manages to squeeze in some quality time with the foxy lady.”
“Honestly, the way those two cats were behaving, you’d think Louie was the father of those kittens.”
At that the cat thumped resoundingly to the floor and disappeared.
“Alone at last,” said Max, who had never released her fingers. “Apparently fatherhood is a tender subject for Louie just now. He can never be one now, you know.”
“You’d think he’d thank me! Look at the grief those striped kittens have caused. Besides, Louie isn’t the paternal sort.”
“How do you know?”
She looked after him, or where he’d disappeared to, probably her bedroom. He knew how to pick his theater of operations. Lose one beachhead, take over the next most likely contested spot.
“I don’t,” she admitted. “And I never will. Anyway, it was so delicious to see Savannah Ashleigh wailing and screaming. Such a baaaad loser.”
Temple decided not to ruin the celebration by mentioning the judge’s lecture. “Where are we going for dinner?”
“How about the Rio?”
“Oh, great! I love that blue-and-magenta free-form neon all over the new high-rise building in the complex. It has more ooomph for being off the Strip. Did you ever notice how the swoopy wings and plinth look like that ultramodern statue, the Christ of the Andes?”
“No.” Max laughed. “And don’t point that out to anyone else. Las Vegas is supposed to be godless.”
“More churches here per capita than any city in the U.S.”
“Thank you, fountainhead of PR information. Now, are you going to change into something celebratory? You do sort of resemble Allie McBeal.”
“Ick! Lawyer power suit. At least my skirts cover my bony…knees.”
Temple hied to the bedroom, where Louie was sprawled diagonally across the zebra-print comforter, managing, with his forelegs and luxurious tail extended, to pretty much make the surface unfit for human habitation.
Since the Rio cultivated a Mardi Gras air, and since Fat Tuesday was coming soon, Temple pulled out the Midnight Louie heels in all their Austrian crystal glory. With her feet shod in Stuart Weitzman’s, she was up to anything, including rummaging through her jumbled closet to find something suitable to wear. What did you wear with your Cinderella shoes? She paged past a simple black dress with buttons all down the front, quickly, and settled on—aha!—that exquisite vintage ’60s silver-knit suit with short swirly skirt and tailored jacket.