Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  So, now their happy chatter about the Circle Ritz resonated like a dirge.

  “It’s rather small and quaint,” Temple said, trying to take the gloss off a rose that had wilted beyond revival.

  “That’s what we . . . I love about the place.” Danny paused in her living room. “May I see the rest of it?”

  “I . . . suppose so.”

  Choreographers are similar to generals. They see and direct the big picture. They push ahead where they’re not wanted. Danny headed right for Temple’s bedroom.

  “Delightful. So you. Your cat comes with the decor, I suppose. A touch of black enhances any room. My, these rooms are small! Very difficult to happily integrate such modern necessities as the significant bed or home entertainment system. It appears that each unit in this most admirable building is utterly individual.”

  “Yes, they’re all different. Danny, are you still planning to move here?”

  “Maybe. I have to tour the premises first. Oh, look at the shoes! So you, munchkin. You really need a top-drawer display rack for them all. Just like a department store. Shoes Are Us.”

  “Are you . . . getting into interior design?”

  He turned and regarded her seriously. “I learned a lot from Simon. Interior design too. I’m happy to share that with my friends. It’s a pity to know something and never pass it on.”

  Temple nodded with a lump in her throat. She didn’t fully understand the why and wherefore of Danny’s visit, but recognized that it was a kind of catharsis for him.

  Danny, meanwhile, was playing the ideal home decor maven. “The cat, I suppose, is not a built-in accessory. He adds a great deal to the ambiance, you know.”

  Temple couldn’t help smiling. “I know. Louie is the mascot of the whole Circle Ritz.”

  “Master I could believe. Mascot, never. Well, thanks for the tour.”

  “Wait! Danny. Don’t you want a . . . cup of tea? Something?”

  “Gracious no. I have work to do upstairs.”

  “Work? Upstairs?”

  “I am still consulting, and just now I’m masterminding the choreography of the master suite, of course.”

  “Matt’s?”

  “Is there anyone else residing directly above you? I hope not. The dear boy gave me to believe it is to be a bachelor pad, as they used to say before you were born.”

  “There was a lot they used to say before I was born, such as ‘Excuse me?’ Matt? A bachelor pad?”

  Danny came closer. Despite his curly blond hair, which made him look like a cheerful cherub when he wasn’t behaving like a chorus-line Nazi, Temple saw that his eyes were sunk in blueberry stains of fatigue.

  “Well, that’s not a permanent condition, I understand. Why don’t you pop up and have a look once the delivery apes have finished destroying the pieces and have clumped their way down the service stairs?”

  “No. I can’t. I have a huge new client.”

  “Darling, everything is huge in Las Vegas. Except some well-advertised personal accouterments.”

  Temple ignored the racy reference. Hard. “It’s the New Millennium and their White Russian exhibition.”

  “That is huge.” Danny found the idea so intimidating that he plunked his wiry frame down on her Big White Sofa. Busby Berkeley at home, Temple thought recalling the sublime Hollywood choreographer of the thirties. “How’d you nab that account?”

  “I know the New Millennium PR guy, and he has his hands full, plus.”

  “I would think so. White Russians can be so terribly autocratic. Almost as bad as the bureaucratic Red Russians.”

  “You make Russians sound like varying bottles of wine. You know something about them?”

  “Ballet is theirs! Easter eggs are the Ukrainians but they’re only peasant paintings. I prefer the Fabergé eggs the Russian czars commissioned.”

  “The exhibit will have the bejeweled eggs, including some borrowed from the Forbes collection.”

  Danny whistled. “You’re going to need major security.”

  “Not my responsibility. I just have to make sure that the media I attract aren’t jewel thieves in disguise. Of course the real prize is the Czar Alexander scepter.”

  “How are they going to display that?”

  “In a bullet-proof clear plastic Lexan box.”

  “Last I heard it was worth eight million.”

  “That’s not replacement value. It’s priceless. Alexander was the grandfather of the last of the czars, Nicholas Romanoff. My problem is that the sheer worth of these pieces will turn off the national high-culture press.”

  “Sure. Those arty pencil pushers adore things like yak-spine paintings from the caveman days.”

  “Reporters are as likely to use PDAs these days as notebooks and pencils.”

  Danny shrugged. “Speaking of priceless objects, you want to pop up and see the divine Matt’s new crash pad?”

  When Temple hesitated, he added in a seductive singsong, “He’s just come back to view the formal installation and has no one to show it off to.”

  Temple still wanted to dither, but Danny was looking animated for the first time since Simon’s death. Flexing his creative muscles, even on something as trivial as the redo of a friend’s decor, was a good sign.

  An acquaintance, rather. And not just a room, a straight guy’s bedroom. A straight guy acquaintance’s bedroom. The bedroom of a straight guy acquaintance who happened to have formally declared an interest in her, Temple Barr.

  This was really crowding her comfort zone.

  “Dear one, do tell me that what little I can do is worth at least a look,” Danny said.

  Danny was dear, devastated, devious, devilish, divine.

  She caved.

  Bedtime Stories

  Temple trudged up the stairs one floor, skipping the elevator to give herself time to think.

  She was a friendly neighbor, interested in supporting Danny’s recovery after a dreadful loss and Matt’s graduation into a fully secular life. Cheerful, helpful. So Doris Day it would make your teeth decay from fifty feet.

  She was not a curious, edgy, way-too-turned-on possible partner inspecting a hot new venue: Matt’s investment in a big new bed after sleeping on a monklike cot for God knew how long.

  That was the trouble. God did know. What would He think of her?

  Temple paused in front of the familiar door, then knocked. Of course Matt was here. Danny had just left and told her so.

  They hadn’t spoken since their incendiary “prom” night on the desert. She hadn’t seen him since then. Too late to take the knock back? They weren’t ready for this.

  She wasn’t ready for this.

  “Temple.” Matt stood in the doorway, looking surprised, then as uncertain as she was.

  “I saw Danny on the way out.”

  “Right. He just left.”

  “I didn’t know you were working with him.”

  “He insisted.”

  “On counseling?”

  “No, on . . . redecorating.” Matt shook his head. “I guess one man’s counseling is another man’s therapy. It’s helped him, I think.” Matt’s smile was rueful. “He feels sorry for me.”

  “Do they call that transference, or what?”

  “No, not that. I figure if it gets his mind off the past, who am I to refuse to spend big bucks?”

  “Well, let’s see what big bucks buy.” Temple peered past him, which was hard, into the rooms beyond. Matt was wearing the usual soft warm colors that made his blond hair and brown eyes pop, although he didn’t know it. Khaki, beige. Like vanilla caramel pudding. Warm vanilla caramel pudding. “This is the first I’ve heard of a therapist having to spend big bucks to help a client.”

  “Danny isn’t just any client.”

  “Then that’s good because you aren’t just any therapist.”

  “I’m not a therapist at all. I’m a radio shrink.”

  By then Temple had crossed the threshold. She blinked to see a despised throw rug in front
of the fire-engine-red sinuous Kagan couch.

  Funny, she’d always pictured . . . never mind.

  The gray melamine discount-store cubes in front of the couch had been replaced by mirror-bright stainless-steel cubes.

  “Same effect but way upscale,” she noted.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, everything Danny Dove does is way upscale.”

  “The big production number, the chorus of glittering dozens. It’s his trademark. These improvements do make the room live up to the couch.”

  “I’m glad you approve. This has forced me to upgrade to a gold card.”

  Temple turned to Matt. She’d been shy about looking at him because the last time they’d been together had been pretty overheated. He always looked good enough to top with hot fudge and eat slowly with a long-stemmed spoon. Caramel-blond hair, milk chocolate eyes, toasted vanilla skin. He was one way to break your diet without gaining an ounce.

  She had to admire Danny’s discipline. Dancers had that in spades. Not that Matt was fair game, but Danny’s instinct was to move beyond the surface to a genuine impulse to help the man who had helped him.

  “I don’t know what he’s talked me into,” Matt said. “It doesn’t feel ‘me.’ ”

  Matt’s “me” was in a state of evolution, maybe even revolution. Temple suddenly realized that she really, really wanted to be there.

  “So,” she said, not letting her gaze eel away into social evasion. “Show me the new bedroom.”

  Matt shrugged and opened the door. “It’s not that big, Danny said.”

  Temple refrained from reading anything Danny said (or Matt innocently repeated) the wrong way, but she gasped as the opening door revealed the room beyond. She’d glimpsed this room before, a spare space with jerrybuilt student bookshelves and a barracks brand of simplicity.

  The walls were now glazed shiny meringue white. A brushed stainless-steel king-size bed frame with touches of imperial gold thrust four sinuous posts toward the ceiling, where a Casablanca ceiling fan (the brand or the film variety; take your pick of the fantasy) made lazy circles against the daylight-washed curved ceiling.

  The mirrored blinds on the window sliced the people on the scene into tantalizing slices of motion and distorted the bedposts into the disconcerting illusion of movement.

  “I’ve never seen Art Nouveau Victorian before,” Temple said at last.

  “Is that good? Or bad?”

  “Depends on what you like.” Come to think of it, Matt’s bedroom experience was a combination of Art Nouveau and Victorian.

  “My credit card company likes it a lot,” he said.

  Temple laughed and turned to look at him, and at a mirrored unit that occupied the wall alongside the door and reflected them both against the sumptuous background of The Bed.

  “What’s that?”

  Matt tapped a pressure hinge and the mirrored doors opened to reveal a big plasma TV screen, speakers, sound system, equalizers. DVD recorder, and possibly an alien spaceship launcher.

  “I guess Danny didn’t think the living room was big enough for an entertainment center,” he said.

  “Do you have cable?”

  “Cable? Is something falling down?”

  “Cable TV.”

  “Uh. No. Why?”

  There would be time later to explain the facts of bedroom life. Maybe. At any rate, Matt was wired for sight, sound, and definitely not Disney entertainment.

  “Danny,” he said, “suggested that I needed some help with, you know, bedspreads and sheets and things.”

  “They’re gonna run you a fortune.”

  “Why stop now?”

  She glanced at him. The question had a certain edge. It could be about them as well as the room.

  Temple escaped by approaching the bed. She absently ran her palm up one serpentine brushed-steel post. Cool. Smooth. Glittering with fugitive gold. The frame was a work of art. How had Danny convinced Matt to pay what it cost?

  Of course. It was therapy for Danny. Cost would be no object. Matt had money. He just lacked the lust to spend it. So, Danny made him pay through the nose for a monument to . . . what? Lust? Love. Marital arts?

  Matt was her would-be fiancé, and she hadn’t given him an answer. He came up behind her. He might be naive. He wasn’t stupid.

  “So, what kinda sheets and stuff do I get? And where?”

  “Tuesday Morning. Great discount linens. Fabulous stuff. I think . . . this room is basically off-white, silver, and gold. Maybe Greek Isle blues, from indigo to cerulean to teal to turquoise. Come to think of it, that’s too big a job for Tuesday Morning. We’ll have to hit the boutique bedwear shops in the upscale malls.”

  “Yeah?” Matt was smiling down at her. “I’d really much rather shop with you than Danny. I like that blue idea. Matches your eyes.”

  “I’ve never been a true-blue eye-color person. Just sort of blah gray-blue.”

  “Silver-blue. That’s the way they look in here.”

  And maybe they did. Danny wasn’t beyond establishing a flattering color scheme that would paint Temple right into it.

  She was wavering. This was a room where whatever a woman wore would slip down or ride up. Where a man didn’t fade into the woodwork but seemed like a Great White Hunter taking a break from the noonday sun.

  Max could do this room justice in a New York minute.

  Matt would take a while to get into the groove. But he would. And getting him there would be all the fun.

  “Temple. We haven’t talked.”

  She didn’t talk then.

  “Since,” he added.

  Since.

  He’d made a proposal then. Literal. Marry him. On the maybe plan. Civil ceremony. Civil opportunity to undo it all. Not a bad scheme for an ex-priest hooked on a fallen-away Unitarian with a pretty serious ex-Catholic boyfriend.

  She had a proposal too.

  She reached up, cupped his face in her hands and pulled it down into a kiss that did justice to the room, to Danny’s romantic hopes, to her burdened heart, to Matt’s expanding psycho-sexual ambitions. She was the experienced one. She shouldn’t take advantage of his situation, his dead-serious feelings for her. He’d be so easy to seduce that he . . . was seducing her.

  This felt like heaven. The sweet, seriously escalating way he kissed her, his hands clinging to her like she was his personal life raft. The hell with it! She just wanted to sleep with him. Full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes. She felt him respond heatedly to her mouth, her hands. Want met need met love met sexual steam heat. Ah . . . the Perfect Storm.

  She broke away. She did. Put a shushing finger on his lips.

  Somebody had to run for safe harbor before the storm broke and drowned them all.

  Afternoon Delight

  Now that Temple’s personal life was in a sensual shambles, the art and magic extravaganza at the New Millennium was starting to pull together.

  She may have enjoyed a brief encounter, an intimate interlude that had ended in a draw: she and Matt had both drawn back, shaky, from a brink that was still awaiting them with a sweet, edgy certainty. Hesitation only intensified the Danse Romantique.

  But crass reality didn’t slow down life crises for a second.

  The media, like a Roman coliseum audience having had a dead body thrown to it, had buzzed around like flies. Then they’d accepted the notion of a petty thief caught in his own inept web and moved on to other, more gruesome crimes. Hanging was so bloodless.

  And Art Deckle’s rap sheet was too penny ante to present a serious threat to such a major event. He was a fruit fly caught on adhesive paper meant for a far larger pest.

  Temple felt rather bad about that. She considered that if she really wanted to really feel bad, she’d make sure she and Max rendezvoused soon so they could seriously examine the state of their union.

  But she didn’t feel quite up to that yet after her brief but warm encounter with Matt yesterday afternoon.

  So, she lingered at home for a chang
e, brooding over her four P.M. energy-boost coffee and yogurt smoothie while Kit padded back and forth from the living room to her office bathroom with an ex-actor’s heavy-lidded dislike of mornings.

  “You must have been up really late,” Temple said as her bath-robed aunt sleep-walked past for the sixth time. “I’m sorry this New Millennium project has put the kibosh on our running around town and having fun.”

  “Don’t be.” Kit paused beside Temple at the kitchen counter stool and yawned. “I have been running around and having kinky fun anyway.”

  “But Vegas isn’t a place to see all by your lonesome.”

  “Who said I was lonesome?”

  “I thought we’d do all these girly things, like the hotel world-class shopping malls.”

  “That will be fun.” Kit hopped up on the adjacent stool and poured coffee into a clean mug.

  “There’s Splenda in the dish.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Cream or milk in the fridge.”

  “No thanks. I want this cup as hot as hell, as black as sin, and as strong as the devil.” “Goodness, Auntie!”

  “. . . has nothing to do with it, as Mae West remarked. I didn’t come in until four A.M., but you were slumbering like the babe you so clearly are in my memory. Glad I didn’t upset your dreams.”

  “Four A.M., Aunt? What were you doing?”

  “None of your business, Niece.”

  “Have you picked up some gambling jones while I wasn’t watching? Mom would never forgive me.”

  “Why should she? She never forgave me.”

  “Forgave you for what?”

  Kit’s pale blue eyes, now half open, eyed Temple over the mug’s thick rim.

  “Let me count the ways. For being her younger sister. For majoring in something as impractical as theater, for leaving Minnesota when I was twenty-two, for never marrying, for actually getting acting jobs in New York, for never having kids, for becoming a writer on top of everything when I got too old to play thirty-somethings.”

  “Kit. I thought you and mom were . . . okay with each other.”

  “There were just two of us, Temple. Two sisters only a couple years apart in age. That’s an awful lot of sibling rivalry for one family. Didn’t you ever wonder why you were her fifth child?”