“Kathleen served up injustice.”
“Perhaps not in her own mind. What a puzzle and homicidal round we began in Northern Ireland.”
“I began.”
“No. You were in the middle, that’s all. As all innocents are, caught in the middle. You were just a boy.”
“Are any of us ‘just’ anything? I was … programmed to hate the ‘other,’ the ‘wrong’ side, as in all sectarian wars. I found my soul mate in Kathleen O’Connor. We were made for each other, drawn to our most opposite extremes. Now she’s dead, and I don’t know what to make of myself anymore.”
“Dead? Kathleen? No, lad. Such ideas never die. They infect. For a time she revitalized the movement, single-handedly, with her hatred and her … well, whatever she had in full measure.”
“But you are alive. I never expected that.”
“To my discredit. I would rather be dead in my own place than alive in another’s.”
Max thought. “I can’t say that of myself. Yet.”
“Then you have a future.”
He studied Gandolph. Once he had believed the older man could never be wrong.
Now he knew that anyone could be.
Even, for a split second of inattention or blind fury, Kitty the Cutter.
Chapter 39
The Morning After:
Foxy Proxy
Temple stood stock-still in the middle of the crowded convention aisle, people brushing against her every five seconds, their excited hubbub echoing to the top of the cavernous space.
This hubbub had a definite soprano tinge. One might even call it shrill. If one were sexist. Luckily, there weren’t any of those sort around here. It wouldn’t pay.
Temple inhaled the very mixed bag that scented the air-conditioned environment. There was a smorgasbord of odors from the food booths and latte bars, from exotic or even erotic massage oils and hair spray. She hadn’t done PR for a major civic-center event in a few months. Her feet, once hardened to miles of concrete underfoot, now throbbed beneath her despite the concession of thick-soled and cushy clogs.
She had finally found time to venture out from the press room. The media had come, saw, and conquered, shooting miles of film that would show up on local and regional TV, and as far away as Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Chicago.
Temple’s résumé was rosy with new praise from the organizers, but she wasn’t one to blush at getting quote-worthy recommendations. A freelancer lived or died by word of mouth.
And the subject of her reentry into major convention business was so up her alley. It was the annual Nevada women’s show, a combination sales exhibition and pajama party, crammed with booths on time-saving gadgets, amazing beautification products, clothes, jewelry, and legerdemain: false nails, false hair, false push-up boobs, false teeth … ah, no, not that quite yet, but falsely whitened teeth.
This was an unabashedly girly event and Temple was an unabashedly girly girl. If it was good enough for a buff but disarmingly petite little number like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was good enough for her. So she’d had no trouble revving up the media on all that was new and exciting in a Woman’s World.
Working this convention was the equivalent of a Mental Health Day off from work, times seven.
Now, on Sunday, the last day, she ambled among the exhibits, even paused to decide if a lifetime of never being able to tie a decent-looking knot could indeed be redeemed by a handy-dandy gadget called “Scarf-It-Up!” Exclamation free of charge.
For her, even exclamation marks couldn’t redeem butterfingers.
She moved on, fascinated by a display of glittering minerals in small plastic towers, fairy dust for female faces. The women who manned the booths (paradox intentional) spotted her staff badge and immediately offered elaborate demonstrations and yummy freebies, which she took. For journalists that was a no-no, but PR people needed to know how the items they promoted worked. It was on-the-job research. Right, she thought, tucking a clever zebra-fabric mini-tote with miniature samples of lip gloss, eye cream, and nail enamel into her usual Goliath-size tote bag. She loved being back in business.
But this was the exhibition’s last hours on the last day. When the Sunday sun went down, the magic booth-city of ideas and products would vanish like the dropped flyers littering the aisles.
Tempting words blared from the papers ground underfoot along with the rainbow wink of glitter: Renew. Glamourous. Recharge. Easy. Cheap. Miraculous. Magic.
Temple found her wandering eye snagged by a glittering tray of rings. Inexpensive costume rings, but, hey, a girl could always use a cocktail ring. So she often thought in department store aisles, but she had never ever bought one.
These were cubic zirconia, she guessed, set in gilded sterling silver. “Vermeil” was the formal name for literally gilding the costume jewelry lily. A girly girl could always scope out rings, just because.
One. This one. It reminded her—sharply—of the ring Max had given her last Christmas, which already seemed half a lifetime ago.
She paused to stare at it. Amid gaudy “diamond” solitaires too big to be real, this was the only classy design, the setting angular and intriguing. One large stone, a moonstone maybe—it couldn’t be a real opal—was offset and set off by twinkling diamonds. Cubic zirconia, or name-brand substitute.
Temple felt a compulsion to buy the thing. Was it merely because it looked like the ring she had lost so soon, surrendered to an onstage magician who had vanished with it never to reappear … until the ring had turned up weeks later at a murder scene. Apparently it had gone from Temple’s hand, to the mandarin-nailed claw of Shangri-La the magician, to the plastic evidence baggie of Lieutenant C. R. (Cruella de Rottweiler) Molina.
Temple’s fingers hovered over the ring.
“Don’t be shy. Try it on,” a hyper-happy (harpy?) female voice urged.
Temple, bewitched by the ring, didn’t even answer, but did as suggested.
The ring glided over her knuckle (third finger left hand) as though made for it. It settled into the groove between her middle and little fingers like a baby into a cradle.
“How much?” she asked.
“Ummm. Thirty-eight ninety-five.”
Gee, $38.95 to reclaim a dream, a memory, a moment. Not a bad bargain. But it wasn’t really like her ring. Her memory must have already decayed a little. She knew she couldn’t be sure. Still …
“Thirty-two. It’s the last day of the expo.”
Thirty-two! Well. Temple stared at the ring on her finger. It seemed to belong there. Her other hand dug in her tote bag for her wallet. At thirty-two cash would be okay, and the exhibitor probably would be spared a percentage to the credit card company.
“It’s lovely,” the woman said, sealing the bargain. “Made for you.”
The real ring, the original, had been lovely, and the way it had been presented had been even lovelier, that Temple remembered exactly. Poor Max. His best intentions of six months ago had turned into hash again, like all best intentions. Not his fault. Not hers. Just … life and all its accidents.
Temple stuffed her change, five bucks plus some coins once tax had been added, into her tote bag and turned away.
“Wait!” the saleswoman urged. Her beautifully manicured hand reached out to push a small hot-pink moiré box into Temple’s tote bag. “The box is free; might as well take it.”
“Thanks!” That’s what Temple loved about girly events; they were brimming over with bonuses and free gifts and little touches you didn’t expect.
She glanced again at her hand, fanned her fingers, enjoyed the ring resting there like it belonged, like it had always been there.
She didn’t dare tell/show Max. He would recognize it for the cheap imitation it was. He would remember the ring he had given her in every detail. She just remembered it in her emotions, and that seemed close enough. Better than nothing. It was her secret, this ring. Her secret and her souvenir.