“Him I can handle. Your impetuous lives and times I cannot.”
Smoke and mirrors. Las Vegas was the home of the absurdly glittering cocktail lounge and Temple loved every overblown one of them, although none was a smoke-free zone. For the short time she visited, she chose to think of the airborne eddies as produced by dry ice from a misty horror movie.
In the reflections all around them, providing film-splice glimpses of their images, Temple saw she and her aunt could be taken for mother and daughter, perhaps more than her own mother. Kit was a sophisticate who’d lived most of her life single in Manhattan. Her sister Karen had reared four strapping sons and one petite girl in suburban Minneapolis.
Once each had been served with the elaborate cocktail of her choice in a stemmed glass, Kit lifted her glass for a toast. “I congratulate you on not waiting as long as I did to tie the knot. A bride at sixty-something.” Kit rolled her eyes. Her hair was a softer, faded peachy red than Temple’s vivid red-gold, but they were both five-foot-zero.
“You were a gorgeous bride,” Temple assured Kit. “And irresistible. Think about it. Aldo stayed single for almost fifty years.”
“Well, I assume we can count from when he attained the age of majority at twenty-one, so he only had to deny himself matrimony for twenty-five years. Your mother in Minnesota would strangle me if she knew I was the first to hear details of your wedding.”
Temple lifted and sipped in time with her aunt. “That’s just it,” she said after savoring. “Everything must be hush-hush. Just between us. I need the preliminaries in place.”
“When is the big date?”
“Ah, not sure yet.”
“So, niece. I am to stage-manage a formal wedding with out-of-town guests in four-four time. Sometime. Soon?”
“Not alone. Danny Dove will help.”
Kit fanned her face with the table’s specialty cocktails menu. “Oh, my further shattering nerves. I am to assist the foremost and fussiest producer-director in Las Vegas.”
“Quite the contrary. He has promised to assist you,” Temple said. Then she frowned. “Although the Ladies Altar and Flower Society at Our Lady of Guadalupe might be a challenge. I gather they’re rather proprietary.”
“You’re not planning on a Crystal Phoenix wedding, like Aldo and I had? The Phoenix would roll out the red carpet for you. You’re living in ‘Vegas, Baby’ and getting married in a parish church?”
“Las Vegas has long been noted for its variety and abundances of churches, Aunt,” Temple said demurely. Cocktails tended to make her demure, which was why she didn’t drink too many of them.
“Las Vegas is also noted for its variety and abundance of amazing, fantastic, sumptuous, luxurious wedding chapels too,” Kit said. “Not to mention your landlady’s uniquely charming Lover’s Knot chapel where Matt’s mother remarried for a first shot at real happiness.”
“Oh, I know there are so many people who’d like a say in the ceremony, so many people to please.”
Kit’s warm hand clenched Temple’s cold one. “When it involves your wedding, the only person to please is the bride. Truly. Otherwise you’ll be honeymooning in a nuthouse.”
“Thank you, Kit. That’s the kind of advice I asked you here to provide.”
“I’ll do anything I can, whenever it happens, but why so vague?”
“Matt’s agent’s negotiations with the network producers on that talk show job are ongoing. We don’t want to tip anything off. You know media people, Kit. You were an actress and then a novelist in New York City. These negotiations are delicate.”
And, Temple didn’t add, although she was dying to tell Kit all the fabulous news from Tony, we can’t marry until Max and I find the hidden IRA hoard of money and guns, and I find out what Matt’s secretly involved in with Molina, who, if she’s nice to me, can sing at my Our Lady of Guadalupe wedding with her daughter. If she is messing with Matt’s head, she won’t be allowed to sweep out the confessionals.
“I do understand media nosiness,” Kit said. “My lips are sealed with long-lasting ‘Scarlet O’Hara Woman’ ravishing red gloss. What do you need from me now?”
“Say yes to the dress.”
“Shopping? For your bridal gown? First, curtains are out, despite my lip color. Oh, what fun!! You’re so young. You can do anything. Princess Diana with clouds of skirts and shoulder ruffles. Not Kate Middleton, that was lovely, but a bit too demure, Kim Kardashian…”
“Nothing Kim Kardashian. I only require a train exactly my height, but I do require a train. One of La Kardashian’s gowns had a train long enough to wrap the groom several times around, like a mummy.”
“I’m sure her husbands felt like flies in a spider’s cocoon. She seems to regard weddings as investment growth operations.”
Temple was thinking. “I’ve wanted to wear a dress with a train since I realized I was never going to grow any taller than I was in junior high.”
“Poor traumatized child.” Kit patted her hand. “You do realize that sad lack of stature automatically enrolls us in the EHHCC.
“EHHCC?”
“The Endless High Heel Collection Club.”
“And that’s another thing. The front hem must be high enough to show the Midnight Louie shoes.”
“This is beginning to sound like a custom tailoring job.”
“No time for that. Off the rack is fine with me. Oh, and nothing strapless.”
“Oh, my Great Granny’s Garters! Not strapless. That makes it an impossible quest. Every bride today goes for a strapless wedding dress.”
“You and Matt’s mother didn’t.”
“We were mature brides,” Kit said with pursed lips.
“I think following the crowd is immature.” Temple finished her cocktail. “Come on, take up your tote bag and walk to the parking garage and my car. I’ve found a bridal shop on Rainbow Boulevard that sounds promising.”
“Probably why it’s located there. Good marketing.”
“Since marketing’s my game, I figure they might have good taste too.”
And tons and tons of lace, satin, and beaded chiffon white strapless wedding gowns.
“Oh,” Temple said when she and Kit walked in the door and then stopped.
Two towering mannequins wearing strapless gowns greeted them, along with a bridesmaid and flower girl. And so did a tall brunette Temple’s age who might bring to mind Lieutenant C.R. Molina if she’d ever wear leggings and kitten heels and a smart cold-shoulder top. Dream on.
Temple’s heart sank. She and Kit suddenly seemed like Munchkins overwhelmed by a wedding party of six-foot-tall mannequins.
“Mother and daughter?” their greeter chirped, the chickadee voice odd coming from such a rangy woman.
They nodded mutely. It was better than explaining their relationship at length, which was the one thing they could both do, explain at length. Best not to start.
“Please sit.” The woman gestured to a pair of expensive tufted leather boudoir chairs. “I’m Courtney.”
“Temple Barr.”
“I’m Kit. Kit Carlson Fontana.”
A ghost of recognition materialized between Courtney’s beautifully plucked eyebrows and floated away. Kit Carson had been an Old West pony express rider and Fontana was an old but ambiguously law-abiding Vegas name. Or maybe long, tall Courtney had dated one of the boys.
The clients’ difference in surnames wasn’t an issue. So many women kept maiden names or remarried like a Kardashian these days, all to the good of bridal shops’ bottom line,
Behind the wedding consultant stretched rows and rows of bridal gowns shrouded in plastic like captive clouds. Or ghosts, all about seven feet tall. Temple glanced at Kit, intimidated for the first time in a long while.