Sure.” Matt hoisted his glass of pale wine to show he was set for a while, and Janice left.
He strolled along the beige travertine tiles circling the store’s perimeter, eyeing a smorgasbord of empty rooms with furniture too grand to imagine oneself using.
He tried to spot something he could legitimately “acquire,” to give Janice a commission. Every interesting table he came near enough to read the undersized tags was way too costly for his druthers, if not his income. No wonder Temple exulted in secondhand chic: it saved dough.
He paused before what passed for beds nowadays, a behemoth on tiered platforms, canopied and covered with enough brocade and pillows to resemble a setting from which a Louis the Someteenth might have given royal decrees.
Matt supposed his spare box spring and mattress could use some upgrading, but Versailles or Buckingham Palace wasn’t what he had in mind.
“Fabulous, isn’t it?” The voice rang a bell. Perhaps the one at Notre Dame?
Matt turned. A slight man holding a large painting of rather overblown peonies also stood gazing at the Renaissance master bedroom vignette.
“Too much,” Matt said, surprised to recognize his viewing partner.
“I guess we were trained to the simple life.” Jerome Johnson smiled, balancing the frame edge on an upholstered chaise longe.
“Monastic this is not,” Matt agreed.
“So … what are you doing here-?” they each began in disconcerting sync.
“I work here.” Jerome.
“Oh, right.” Matt. “When you buttonholed me outside the radio station the other night to say hello, you mentioned that you were a ‘framer.’ ” Matt nodded at the painting. “It didn’t connect with me, what you framed.”
Jerome had also mentioned their years in the same Catholic seminary and how vividly he remembered Matt. Far too vividly for Matt’s comfort zone.
“So you work for Maylords,” Matt said, still feeling awkward.
“Yeah. Tote that assembly-line original.” Jerome made a face into his sandy beard. “Did you come because-?”
Matt had to stop that notion in the bud, the peony bud. “Janice. Janice Flanders. She works here now. A friend of mine,” he said. Firmly. “She asked me to come tonight.”
“Oh. Janice. She’s okay.”
Matt was about to say that Janice was more than “okay,” when he noticed someone walking briskly toward them. This was a social event. People stood and talked, or ambled and gazed.
“Jerry!” Beth Blanchard was bearing down on another hapless victim. From Jerome’s expression, he hated being called Jerry. “I want that painting in the French vignette. Now. No point dawdling in front of the displays. You can’t collect a commission anyway. You’re just a drone.”
Matt had the impression that she had not failed to see him, but enjoyed displaying her vicious streak in front of a witness.
Matt’s idealistic instincts urged him to defend a former fellow seminarian from this harpy in heels. His knowledge of human nature told him that interfering would only deepen the humiliation.
She finally allowed herself to notice him. Her features showed surprise before the expression “you again” made them scowl … again. She was a young woman, quite presentable. There was no visible reason for her to act like Elvira Gulch on the trail of Toto, but reason seldom ruled some personalities.
By now, he-the hapless stranger-had irritated her controlling personality as much as anybody she worked with and, God
forbid, lived with.
Matt became a placid shore on which her fury broke in vain. Jerome cast him a farewell wince, then moved along like a whipped cur. Matt had never seen such a graphic illustration of that clich� before. He knew Jerome felt it all the more because of his feelings for Matt himself.
Unreturned feelings. He understood that unpleasant situation. Poor Jerome. Matt’s hands were fists, he discovered. He consciously relaxed his fingers, eased out his breath. Under the normal surface of everyday life stirred the monsters of the deep: everybody’s history and hurts, roiling like crosscurrents. Matt stopped himself from watching the unlikely couple leave, and turned back to stare at the vignette, seeing only the baroque curlicues on the brocades writhing like embroidered serpents.
“Hey, you,” said a voice soft and insinuating behind him. “You’d better get those world-class buns back on the floor and
start mixing with the clients.”
Matt turned.
A tall, grinning, bucktoothed man stood leering at him like a Renaissance devil.
Matt didn’t have to say or do a thing.
The man’s expression collapsed. “Sorry. I thought you were … sorry?’ He whirled and left so fast that Matt wondered if he’d even recognize him again.
Chapter 7
Imagine Meeting
Y o Hu e r e …
Temple had been dying to remain glued to the orange leather sofa, interrogating Janice Flanders while pretending to make
small talk.
Why was Matt here, of all places? Because he was with Janice, obviously. Hadn’t Molina mentioned that he was seeing Janice? Temple couldn’t remember, but then so much had happened lately.
“It’s been ages. Where have you been hiding yourself?”
Speaking of small talk, Danny Dove expertly tossed it over his shoulder to Temple while weaving an elegant path through the crowds. He kept her hand in custody and therefore, Temple in tow.
“Haven’t had any show-biz related projects lately,” Temple said. “I’ve never seen anybody cut a faster wake through a mob
than this.”
“Hate crowds, except onstage,” Danny explained, finally leading her into an Art Deco vignette that made her want to redo her whole place right away.“Here we are,” Danny said.
And there was indeed a “we” here.
A pudgy, short, red-faced man in a wrinkled, oatmeal-colored linen suit was gesticulating like a manic mime at a slim, tall man wearing a suit the same silky color and texture as Baileys Irish Cream.
It was like watching Oliver Hardy berating Bond, James Bond, the Roger Moore incarnation.
They turned, actors noticing an audience.
“I’m done,” the short man said … shortly. He favored Temple with a particularly venomous look, then left.
“Who is Grumpy, Dopey, and Pissed Off all put together?” Danny asked.
“The manager of the whole enchilada,” the other man answered.
He was one of those guys so dreamily handsome that the savvy woman figured out he was gay before she allowed her heart to skip a beat or her hormones to rev their engines. “This is my partner, Simon Foster,” Danny said. He drew Temple forward to introduce them with such beaming pleasure that each instantly knew the other was too important to dismiss on mere sexual preference grounds.
Temple looked past the gorgeous suit, the hair, the eyes to a smart and slightly diffident personality.
“You’re the crime-fighting PR woman,” Simon said.
“Oh, Lord.” Temple laughed. “Danny’s been casting me in some musical in his mind again. Freelance PR Superwoman. It’s just that I sometimes run across crooks:’
“Don’t we all?” Simon smiled and sighed at the same time. “What’s your gig?” Temple asked.
“Gig? Isn’t she the little trouper?” Danny asked rhetorically. “Simon is an interior designer.”
“I’ve been freelance until now,” Simon added. “The lure of Maylords was a regular paycheck, but I’ll still be able to work with my previous client list, and hopefully expand.”
Temple read the underlying message obvious in both Janice and Simon’s presence on the staff of Maylords. Times were tough. The Clinton budget overage had morphed into the Bush megadeficit. Free spirits everywhere were hitching their stars to any steady job they could find.