“We’ll be the first seating, so the place will be quiet at this hour. It’s white-tablecloth expensive but four-star. And I reserved a banquette table for four, so you can sit on cushy leather and stretch your legs out under the empty seat kitty-corner.”
“And I let you get away?”
Temple didn’t answer. She couldn’t. He had let her get away, probably for her own safety, judging from what had happened to him.
“That was too … too flip,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Wait’ll you see this place and the menu, then you’ll really be sorry,” Temple said, her usual composure back and sassy. “I need to … orient you to some things. We can answer each other’s burning questions over dinner while you get a break from riding in my pip-squeak car.”
“Thoughtful, but don’t let this cane mislead you. I stopped using one, then I … reinjured myself a little recently, and then came the endless flights. You’re right that explaining myself and your explaining me to me should be on neutral ground.”
“Gosh, you’re way more agreeable than you used to be.”
He grinned for the first time. “I was hoping to learn I was a cantankerous bastard.”
She just smiled and concentrated on her driving.
He read the giant “ph” sign as she turned off the Strip into an entrance driveway. “Isn’t that something to do with skin care?”
“Planet Hollywood.” She nodded at the building’s top that spelled out the words in uncapitalized white neon, understated for Vegas.
“It’s an entire hotel now,” he asked, “not just a restaurant?”
It had been for four years, and Max had only been gone a couple months. She felt a sharp interior wrench to realize how much personal history he’d lost in such a short time.
“Yup,” Temple said. “I find this the classiest interior on the Strip, aside from the Crystal Phoenix. We’re a bit early because you came through faster than I anticipated, so we can have a cocktail at the Living Room bar.”
“Sounds cozy,” Max said, struggling to exit the Miata while the doorman held out a hand for his cane. The parking valet saw Temple out.
“Do you remember any Vegas hotels?” she asked as they entered and were instantly immersed in a gigantic, dim, cool space where even the gaudy slot machines looked primped for a Red Carpet stroll.
“The Crystal Phoenix rang a bell,” Max said. “Lots of high-end crystal.”
“A client of mine,” she said.
“This place too?”
“Not. I’m a one-woman operation. I just like the ambiance here.”
“Aha. That’ll betray a lot about you.”
“Not hard. I’m wearing a fifties-vintage suit and this place is understated Art Deco, unless it’s overstated Art Deco.”
“Vintage is your thing, really?”
He had to study the damn suit, of course. Temple felt an unreasonable pang for her missing Miracle Bra.
“Chartreuse was hot in the nineteen-fifties,” she said, “and classic suits are classic suits.”
“Chartreuse is hot in twenty-somethings, too.”
No comment. Temple bustled across the busy patterned carpeting all casinos demanded for maintenance to a pair of escalators set between towering, color-changing rectangular lights.
“I forgot. Can you do escalators?” she asked, looking back. “Where’s your cane?”
“Sure. Saves steps.” He patted the side pocket of his long, European-styled blazer. “The cane is collapsible.”
They glided up, surveying the subdued casino below, nearing the solid ceiling blocks of marquee-shaped neon lighting that kept shifting colors.
“I commend subtle,” Max said.
“I’m not,” Temple said.
“I like honesty better.”
“You must be drawing on memory to venture opinions.”
“I know what I like,” he said. “I just don’t remember why or who or when or where. Or what.” He slipped his sunglasses into his inside breast pocket.
Even in the muted lighting, she could see his features’ new gauntness and a healing forehead gash the frames had obscured. And a haunted look of loss in his eyes.
Or what with whom. Temple diverted herself back to the tour-guide role. “Come into my fave parlor on the Strip.”
They turned left and they were there. Venetian glass-framed mirrors seemed to float on hanging walls of red velvet curtains. The Living Room was furnished with low bronze leather sofas and tiny bronze metal–sculpted cocktail tables. A spectacularly gilt-rimmed dome hosted a glittering chandelier that reflected in the metal and glass bar.
Thankfully, Max was impressed. She was more Hollywood than he. “Gloriously decadent. Something from an Anne Rice vampire novel.”
Max had read Rice? She’d never known that before.
Only a few customers impeded the view. When the sleek cocktail waitress offered a small padded menu of signature drinks from the polished black altar of the towering bar, something quickly caught Temple’s eye.
“An Albino Vampire?” Max asked, following her gaze. “Like a Chocolatini, the menu says, but with white chocolate and Chambord.”
“White chocolate and raspberry.” Temple needed to loosen her tension, and this sounded like dessert. “What about it, Rice reader?”
“A little girly, but you’re driving, after a long dinner.”
“It’s got surprising kick,” the waitress told Max.
“A Vegas motto,” he said. After she left, he noted, “I hope you can stake me for a couple days.”
“I was planning on it. Do you have access to any operating funds here at all?”
“Since I’m told I was pulled out of some local nightclub dressed as a bungee-jumping maniac advertising himself as the ‘Phantom Mage,’ I had no ID, no credit cards, nothing. But I did have—”
Max stopped. “I need a drink before I go any further. What about you?” He glanced at the vintage ruby-and-diamond ring on her third finger, left hand. “What did you know about my sudden … absence?”
“Next to nothing. You’d been … withdrawing. You’d never told me about your Phantom Mage escapade. There were reports a nameless performer had crashed into the polished black walls of the Neon Nightmare club when a bungee cord broke. Rumors said he’d died and had been taken away by an emergency crew. Yet no one matching those circumstances had ended up at a local hospital. So was it you, or some other masked magician? I didn’t like to think you’d leave without telling me if you could, but you’d been acting strange lately.”
“In what way?”
“In pretty much encouraging me to encourage a friend into turning more than.” She fanned the fingers on her left hand.
“Another magic trick. I was told about Matt Devine, yeah.”
“You remember him?”
“Only from the radio station Web site I saw in Europe. I saw yours, too, so you really didn’t need to don the jelly-bean colors.”
“How? Where?”
“It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason.”
He paused while the martini glasses and their white contents with a setting sun of red in the bottom’s V were set before them. Temple raised a right forefinger for the bill. They had a dinner reservation to get to.
“We’d better sip some booze before I go on,” Max suggested. “It’ll get a little heavy from here on.”
She lifted the glass. “I’m sorry, but ‘Cheers’ anyway.”
“Cheers,” he replied in the hasty, absent, British way.
Their glass rims tinged together. After a couple sips, Max asked, “What’s in these things?”
“Vodka and white Crème de Cacao, besides the other liqueurs.”
“All booze,” he said. “Great. Are we there yet? Because I’m afraid I need to report a resurrection and death.”
Temple was struck by the phrase’s reversal of the religious “death and resurrection.” She was wishing Matt was here; this was starting to sound like a confession.