Women were reared to never be satisfied with themselves; it was an occupational hazard.
"Remember how we met?" Max's voice was rumbling above her head like a benign volcano.
"How can I forget? One of my stupidest moves ever. Passing like ships in the night in that hall at the theater, and then running aground."
"We both got whiplash turning to look back. What did you crash into? I collided with a potted ficus tree."
"How can you forget my limbo with the drinking fountain?
That really hurt, almost more than the embarrassment."
"You still had a bruise the first time we made love."
"Guess it happened fast, huh?"
"Instantly, for me, I'd never been hit like that."
"Oh, come on. What about the Rose of Tralee in Ireland!' She sure hasn't forgotten you."
"That's the problem. Now that you know about that, maybe you can understand why I've risked so much, including you, to keep our relationship going."
"How can a cute meeting in a Minneapolis theater compare with a foreign land, the Troubles, your first love?"
"My first loss," he corrected. "It can't. That's what makes what we have so special. With Sean killed, I discovered I'd lost my innocence in so many more ways than one. I felt Sean's death was God's punishment for sleeping with Kathleen."
"You've never said anything before about God in all this."
"I've tried to forget that stuff, because it's too grim to live with. That was what was so wonderful about meeting you. Something about you . . . I was back in high school again and had a chance to do it right. You are my first real love. Temple. You gave me my innocence back."
She didn't know what to say, which was just as well because she couldn't have spoken over the sudden thickening in her throat anyway. And she suddenly saw that he was right, now that she knew the whole story of his past. They had been giddy and so instantly and unreservedly in love, it had been like the first time. It was the first time, only this time for real. The crazy rented rooms near the theater in Minneapolis . . . finding a place as delightfully skewed here in Las Vegas as the Circle Ritz, a fifties-vintage round apartment building that seemed constructed like a stage set of Honeymoon Hotel just for them. They had even invested in the place together, dammit, like lovers with delusions of becoming a lawfully united couple someday soon.
Only someday soon came when Max had vanished without a word, leaving Temple single-handedly holding the mortgage payments and holding off inquisitive Lieutenant Molina, who was all suspicion and questions when it came to Max. Of course the dead body Max had left behind in the ceiling of the Goliath Hotel when he vanished on the last night of his magicians gig there hadn't helped Temple resist Molina's implications that Max was up to his magic wand in something deadly, maybe even murder . . . by him, or worse---his own attempted murder.
But their romantic past had remained a warm, fuzzy domestic dream no amount of current trauma could dislodge. That was what Temple had been fighting for, without knowing it, all the months that Max was so mysteriously gone, while Lieutenant Molina kept demanding explanations for Max's absence, and then for Temple's unswerving loyalty-dumb, feminine loyalty, to Molina.
But there was nothing reasonable about either reality, except how they had felt, from the first moment.
"Are you smiling, or crying?" he asked-
"Watch the movie." she ordered gruffly, through both teeth and tears, "it's one of our favorites."
It was, of course, and therefore thrilling and funny and very, very romantic. And the Fighting O'Flynn was Irish, but he fell in love with the English girl. The Irish girl was just comic relief.
Comic relief. Didn't Temple wish she could believe that was all the mysterious new woman in town, Kitty the Cutter, was . . . and ever had been?
Chapter 2
Media Man
Matt Devine stood in his living room at three-twenty A.M. fresh home from work, a record two pieces of mail in his hands.
Two pieces of personal mail in his lobby box at once. Imagine that.
One was a letter from his mother in Chicago.
The other was a suspiciously small padded mailer from a radio station in Las Vegas. WCOO-AM.
He never went to bed right after getting home from his eight-hour shift at the hotline.
Listening to other people's woes and then piloting them through crises ranging from overdosing on Oreo cookies to cocaine was a sedentary job, but it gave the nervous system a real workout.
So Matt left the two provocative pieces of mail on his red sofa seat and went into the triangular-shaped kitchen to microwave hot water for herbal tea.
Amazing how many appliances one person living alone could accumulate as "necessities." As a parish priest, he had only been vaguely aware of what equipped the kitchen or furnished the rectory parlor. Much of it had been donated, thanks to the Catholic parish tradition of raising money for serious needs at church, rectory, and school. So Matt had always taken the presence of shoves, lamps, and microwave ovens for granted, as if they were wild flowers that sprang up in season when needed or wanted.
Now that he had left the dematerialized world of a religious vocation, every way he tuned was a speed ramp driving him onto the consumer highway. He was a perfect novice consumer, conspicuous or not. Almost everything that secular people took for granted, from clothing to gadgets, was new--and probably lacking to him.
Matt took the steaming mug of Red Zinger (Celestial Seasonings; had the brand name attracted his spiritual side?) to his Goodwill sofa (Vladimir Kagan original From the fifties, according to Temple the secondhand shopper) and set it on the melamine cube table (low-cost high-style Kmart, not courtesy of Martha Stewart, whose hopelessly homebody taste seemed to be redesigning America back into post-war frou-frou these days).
He opened the package first, expecting a promotional audiotape. Radio stations were also trying to convince everybody they were essential, but he didn't have a radio, only a small color TV on a wire-metal stand that looked like it belonged in an old folk's home.
The tape label read AMBROSIA.
That's when it crossed his mind that the tape might be something sleazy. This was Las Vegas, after all, where sex-for-sale offered as many innovations and inclinations as theme hotels.
A letter folded in thirds shook out of the empty package.
It was addressed to him, which made Matt frown, as if he had discovered a dirty wad of gum on the sole of his shoe. Almost no one knew his address, and he was happy with that situation.
He was probably the only man in America who got no junk mail, none specifically addressed to him, that is. There was always the "Occupant" stuff that would dog an apartment address through all its generations of tenants.
"Dear Mr. Devine," it began. He read on, his wariness changing to wonder. Finally he just sat there, balancing the unusable tape in one hand and the letter on the palm of the other. The tape weighed heavier.
He set them aside and used the table knife he had brought from the kitchen to open his mother's letter. (Did he need a real letter opener? Should he buy one? Where? Pier One? A stationery store in the mall? Or save money and stick with the table-knife? Decisions, decisions.) She usually hand-wrote her letters on blue-lined notebook pa- per, tear-off sheets she folded into inexpensive business envelopes.
But this envelope was square and pale blue. The smaller sheets inside had a faint image of a butterfly in the upper left-hand corner.
He raised his eyebrows. Looked like Mom would know where to get a fashionable letter opener these days, now that her niece Krys had drawn her into the shopping mall distractions.