"What has that alley cat dragged in now?" Max was coming over, sounding both proprietary and annoyed.
"I'm afraid to look," Temple admitted. "Cats will sometimes bring you their dead prey as a present."
Max shot her a look. "Lucky for you I'm not a cat." He bent to inspect Louie's offering, but the cat minced backward.
"Come on, kitty, give up the goods. How'd he get up here anyway?"
"He climbs, somehow, then comes in through the bathroom window, which l leave open a bit. I can't understand why he came by the patio, or how he got that French door open."
"Those doors are jokes," Max said, going down on hands and knees to capture the cat.
"Louie doesn't like to be crowded."
"So l see." By now Louie was hacked up against the French door, watching Max crawl toward him.
Temple could have sworn his whiskers raked back at a smug angle.
"That's it," Max cajoled. "Give up the nice bit of . . . yuck."
Temple squinched her eyes shut. "What is it? Animal, right? Dead?"
"Dead, all right. Soggily so." Max rose and approached, his hands cupping the trophy.
"How can you handle it?" she demanded.
"I've handled worse." The dome of his top hand lifted to reveal a limp oleander blossom wilting on his palm.
"A dead flower? Why on earth would Louie drag that in? It looks like it's been off the stern for days."
"Then you don't want me to put it in a vase."
"No way." Temple shook her head at the cat, who was fastidiously grooming his face.
"It was a nice gesture," Max said from the kitchen.
"You approve of something Louie's done?" She followed him in, lured by the aroma of Roma tomatoes.
"Absolutely." Max turned from the cupboard, one of her recycled florist's vases in his hands, filled with velvet-petaled pansies.
"I'm not going to ask how you did that."
"Good. The pizza's getting cold."
They occupied themselves pulling out the plates, knives, forks, and paper napkins that hot pizza required, but never managed to transfer the whole mess to the round card-cum-dining-table near the French doors. Instead, they leaned against the counter and gnawed away on the hot slices right out of the box.
"What brings you over here, really?" Temple asked.
Max shrugged between bites.
"Another message from the Synth?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing's happened ?"
"Nothing, except it's Saturday night, and I'm glad you're home alone."
"Not exactly alone."
His dark eyebrows lifted as if awaiting a confession.
"The cat."
"Oh, him."
"That's no way to write off a cat. Next time he'll visit you with something ickier in his mouth."
"Oleander is poisonous," Max mused, staring at the neon clock on the kitchen wall.
"And he must have had that flower in his mouth for a long time!"
"Don't worry. The leaves are toxic, not the flowers. Wonder where he got it."
"Las Vegas is crawling with oleanders."
"But not in bloom right now."
Temple frowned. "Let me see that flower again."
Max produced it from behind his back.
"It's wet now, from Louie's mouth, but it looks desiccated. He must have picked it up somewhere."
"And mistook it for prey?"
"I'm glad he did. I don't want any door-to-door lizard-delivery service! Speaking of doors, why did you come scratching on mine?"
"Used to be ours."
Max was leaning his elbows on the white countertop. Grinning up at her in the impish manner that always caught her off guard.
"Well, technically, it still is."
"So I thought it was time we spent a Saturday night at home, like we used to."
"You mean, just doing nothing?"
He nodded. "Just doing nothing."
"The couch-potato number? TV, pizza, and--?"
He nodded, glancing around. "Place doesn't look any different, except for the feline delivery boy."
"Max. Did you think I'd have . . . company?"
He paused before answering. "I think you have company now."
"Really! Are you jealous? Worried that--"
"Don't put question marks into words, Temple. That just makes them bigger. I wanted to see you, that's all. On home ground." Max straightened and looked beyond her into the living room.
"My home ground too."
He was right, Temple knew. He'd been gone so long he had ceased to seem at home in the place they had bought together less than two years earlier.
"And you're not alone anymore." He nodded at the black silhouette still washing its face and watching them from the living room. "My animal instincts were right. I do have to reclaim my territory, after all."
Chapter 16
Losers Weepers
A thin dribble of what looked like tobacco juice was all the coffee urn was dispensing.
Matt tossed his stained Styrofoam cup and turned as a departing group member paused to say hello and goodbye.
Damien talked earnestly, and tediously, about a list of recommended books. Matt was tired of reading about being all that he could he, whether it was Thomas Merton's The Seven Story Mountain or Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex. Or maybe The Joy of Sex was a Seven Story Mountain.
"You're out of coffee and they're finally out of steam," Nick noted, coming up after Damien, clutching his pipe, had faded away. Nick zipped shut his windbreaker and pulled on a tweed cap.
"Cheer up, Matt. The worst is over. And the first time is always the worst."
"That sounds like . . . sex. I gave them a red-carpet invitation, didn't I? Why is knowing that everybody else has made the same mistakes as you have supposed to make you feel better?"
"Misery loves company."
"Then you're saying that misery is as good as it gets?"
"No, no. I'm saying that we all have to go through an awkward adolescence when we leave the priesthood, and some of us were much older than you. Call it vocational acne."
"I never had acne," Matt said gloomily.
"Of course not. You never had anything that would have been a detriment to an active teenage social life, except an allergy to the opposite sex. You ever think that life is exceedingly perverse?"
"I never had an allergy to the opposite sex; I wanted to avoid being human in general.
Apparently I did a dam good job of it."
Nick shrugged and waited while Matt pulled on his sheepskin jacket and tried to figure out how old the older man was. lron-gray hair and metal-framed bifocal glasses enhanced a face that must have been all nose and chin before age had softened the features. Matt detected the faint moonscape pitting of acne scars.
It wasn't fair; he himself had a enjoyed a golden adolescence, but he hadn't used it for anything but running away from life. At least the other men here had run to something. Hadn't they?
"Cold out." Nick clapped his palms together as they emerged into the dark parking lot.
Matt couldn't help checking for the ghost of Kitty O'Connor. The muscles in his stomach had tensed.
"People don't realize the desert gets cold at night," Matt agreed.
"No, to most people Las Vegas is just one big, hot, bright, noisy oasis. Boy, a deserted parking lot is kind of spooky! Only my car left and that motorcycle. That's not . . . yours?"
Matt, having spent a couple hours splitting the finer hairs of truth with a hatchet, didn't know how to answer him. "It is mine, and it isn't. My landlady loaned it to me, but it was given to her."
"Been around."
"Used to be His."
" 'His'?" Nick didn't know how to interpret the capital H in Matt's tone. In their circle, capital He's and His's meant the Deity. "Ah." Nick suddenly understood. "So you get the motorcycle, on loan, and he gets the girl, for keeps."
The words struck Matt so sharply that Kitty the Cutter might as well have been there.
"Thanks, Nick. Nice way to put it."
"Sorry. It's just that I get a much better picture of your rival when I see that machine."