“What’s the big surprise in the parking lot you texted me about?” Temple asked as soon as she burst through Matt’s unlocked unit’s door at 11:00 P.M.
They’d gotten back from dinner after ten, both self-conscious after all the talking about Max had left the ghost of his love affair with Temple hanging over them like ectoplasmic halitosis.
Following some discreetly illicit-feeling necking in the hall leading to her door, they’d agreed that Matt needed rest before getting to the radio station at 11:30.
“Especially,” Temple had said sensibly, “with such an unexpected high-pressure week in Chicago to recover from.”
Matt had agreed, uneasily. He still felt crummy about Temple wasting her seduction-worthy dress on a half-baked hallway interlude and had stopped after climbing the stairs to his own place a floor above, thinking about going back down instantly.
Then he noticed someone loitering by the short hall to his door.
“Mister Devine?”
The guy was about twenty-four, dressed in an expensive business suit to pass as at least thirty, his hair lightly gelled into an upward eager beaver do.
Matt nodded slowly. He didn’t look like a thief, more like he was selling something. Door-to-door, at 10:30 P.M.?
“Craig Coppell.” He thrust out a tentative, moist-palmed hand that smelled of … Old Spice? “I’m sorry to disturb your evening, sir, but I’ve been waiting here since six and was instructed not to let a day pass until I gave you this. It was supposed to be here before you got back home.”
He pulled his spongy hand from Matt’s grasp and replaced it with … a set of keys.
“Is this some … sales promotion?” Matt asked, feeling steel prongs poking his palms.
“Promotion? Oh, no, sir, Mister Devine. Maybe for me. Someday. Just look down in the parking lot. With the compliments of Harvey Klinger and Dave Eckstein. Good night, sir, and, whew, sweet dreams.”
The guy was gone before Matt could react. Harvey and Dave sounded familiar, like the Harry and David mail-order catalog of fruit arrangements.…
Duh! Matt turned, but the last echoes of the determined Craig’s running footsteps were wafting up the two stories from the lobby.
If he could forget his new Chicago acquaintances so fast, he guessed he could let go of a formerly presumed-dead guy with a whacked-out memory chip. So, a bit later, he texted Temple to come up to his parlor for a parking-lot surprise.
“What is it, Matt? You’re looking stunned.”
“Like your outfit wouldn’t do it?”
She’d changed into some pink skimpy-topped pajama set with silver chocolate kisses all over them and looked good enough to put over vanilla ice cream and call it a sundae.
He nuzzled the halter straps near her neck, then put an arm around her bare shoulders and marched her to the balcony off the living room. She spotted the new feature of the parking lot below instantly.
“The liquid-silver Jag is yours?”
“Maybe. Call it a perk. Bribe. Whatever.”
“What? Who?”
“The Chicago producers. Can you believe I’d forgotten their names already?”
“No. No more MIA memories around here. How could you forget?”
“It’s all a blur.”
“They must really, really like you. I love the car. While you were ogling it, did you notice that clowder of feral cats hanging around the parking lot? I haven’t seen them recently, and I’m afraid Louie has driven them off, poor things.”
“No, I did not see any cats.” Matt turned her to go back inside.
“Why are you frowning?” she wanted to know. “I know you’re tired and don’t want company just before racing off to WCOO. All that daytime-TV business in Chicago must have been exhausting. And, say, we never discussed the family matters you said were kicking up.”
By then they were back inside and she was hanging off him like a fond climbing vine.
“Temple, you’ve got enough questions to keep the WCOO call-in line busy for the whole Midnight Hour. Yeah, it’s a bit disorienting to be back after all that’s happened, and that’s why I’m afraid I blew it tonight.”
Her sudden silence reminded Matt that he wasn’t the only one who’d returned after an absence, after a much longer and more dramatic absence than his own week-long jaunt.
“I don’t know what’s got you wired,” he told her, “but the last thing I’m going to do with the rest of the hour—before I have to leave to listen to everyone else’s troubles—is sleep, so maybe you could get me some hyperdrive, too.”
“Just get comfy on the infamous Communist couch, and I’ll bring us two Diet Cokes with lime.”
“The ‘infamous Communist couch’?” he asked when she returned to put the glasses on the matched small coffee tables fronting the sinuous length of red-suede couch.
“This is where WCOO had you do that barefoot lounge pose for their first Midnight Hour billboard. It’s by the fifties designer Vladimir Kagan, and it’s red. Red as in ‘Communist,’ back in the day. So assume the position and I’ll cozy up.”
Matt laughed as he kicked off his casual suede loafers and made room for Temple to curl up alongside him.
“When you’re on TV,” she said, “you won’t get away with wearing polo shirts and chinos, even if they come from men’s shops on the Strip.”
“You mean I’ll have to dress on camera like Regis Philbin? Then it’s no deal.”
“Okay,” Temple said. “We can discuss the details of your media future in full daylight. For now, back to my questions. The cats.”
“I didn’t spot any feral colony before I left town, and didn’t see a whisker since we got back tonight. Not even Midnight Louie’s.”
“Me neither, not in the past twenty-four hours, anyway. Which is odd. Usually he’s patrolling the Circle Ritz at night. He’s very territorial, you know.”
“I know,” Matt said, untying the soft knit bow at her nape that held up the loose top.
“I’m forgetting all those questions,” she warned.
“I think I’d like that about now.”
“Wait. This is most important. What’s up with your family?”
Matt leaned back, pulling her atop him. “The good news is our getting married would hardly ruffle a Polish feather.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s my mother’s getting married that has the extensive extended family in an uproar.”
“Your mother? Remarrying? That’s wonderful. Maybe we can make it a double ceremony.”
“Temple.” He put a hand over her mouth. “Temple, Temple. Always the PR hotshot. No, we do not want to be involved in any way in my mother’s marital plans. I did mention that a distinguished older guy seemed to be sweet on her at the tourist-spot Polish restaurant where she’s a hostess?”
“Yeah, I guess. You said she was coming out of her self-imposed shell after punishing herself for having you out of wedlock—wedlock, that does sound mandatory and icky—by marrying that abusive loser, um, Efflinger, Essing.…”
“Effinger. Cliff Effinger.”
“Right. Effinger. But he went down with the Treasure Island’s old pirate-ship attraction, after someone bound him to the bow to go to a watery grave when the ship was sunk during the evening spectacle. So your mom’s free to remarry, even by the Catholic Church’s standards.”
Matt shook his head in disbelief. “That’s not the problem. She’s perfectly free to marry. I think it’d be wonderful if she did marry someone. I would even give her away, since she’s old-fashioned and probably willing to be given away.… What would you do about being ‘given away,’ Temple?”
“Oh, I’d let my father waltz me down the aisle. I am the only daughter. I really couldn’t deprive the old folks at home of their traditional roles just because the custom is sexist.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” Matt said, kissing her just as sweetly.
Temple was not about to be diverted from the latest news as soon as the kiss ended.
“You still didn’t tell me what’s bad about your family situation. Sounds peachy to me. Postmenopausal romance, like my aunt Kit’s. Marriage to a guy who sounds like a pillar of the community, if not a Fontana brother. Don’t you think your mom deserves a second chance?”
Matt sighed and explained. “It’s not peachy. Mom’s finally met her restaurant Romeo’s family. Her new guy happens to be my birth father’s brother.”
Temple gasped and put her own hand over her mouth before it outpaced her mind. “Wow. When you tried to arrange a meeting after you found your birth father, your mom walked out, refusing to meet him. She must hate him.”
“I’ve left them all alone since my brilliant attempt at failed mediation,” Matt said. “My real dad is married, but not happily anymore, though he never said so. I don’t know if he married in the Church. And my mom—they were teenagers who met in a church, for God’s sake. He was bound out of the country for service the next day, so the attraction must have been instant and intense.… I figure they both never got over it and they’re scared to death of each other. The whole situation’s impossible.”
“That family meeting must have been horribly awkward. And your mom told her strict Catholic relatives?”
“She didn’t. She just broke off the relationship with my father’s brother, and they all think she’s crazy.”
Temple shook her head. “What a tragic mess.”
“Mister Midnight here doesn’t know what to tell anybody, except to get off each other’s case.”
“Matt.” He looked hard at her because of the “more bad news” tone of voice.
“I hate to bring this up, but if this … family tangle got out, couldn’t it hurt your reputation as an advice-giving talk-show host?”
He looked dumbfounded. “I never thought of that.”
“And that’s why I love you,” Temple said, “but PR is my business. I have to say if your media presence is due for a huge upswing, the paparazzi and Internet rumors will be all over you and everything about you. Especially your roots and family.”
“Even us, Temple? Even you?”
She fake-punched his bicep. “I’m a media girl. I can take it, big boy. I just think you better get the situation with your mother and the two brothers straightened out before this deal goes public.”
“Or goes through,” he said. “Meanwhile, tomorrow is another day.” He pulled the knit straps down past her elbows, tangling her in his embrace.
Temple looked surprised and very pleased. “Oh. We, uh, don’t have a lot of time before you need to leave for the station.”
“I’ve got a fast car and I’m from Chicago. We do everything fast and hard there,” he said, rolling her over and under him, “and Chicago girls like it that way.”