Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Little Black Dress

The Circle Ritz’s sole elevator ground through its rare, mysterious movements in the middle of the night like a cranky architectural bowel. This was past the middle of the night. Past two A.M.

Temple thought of the timeline documentaries PBS liked to present: if all human history was a clock and it was one minute to midnight, we, the people, would not even exist. Dinosaurs would rule the earth. As if dinosaurs had ever had political ambitions.

On the other hand, all politicians had dinosaur tendencies.

She next heard the slow approach of footsteps on parquet flooring, a dull tick-tock, tick-tock, like a clock. Her heart was off beat, pounding triple time.

A shadow filled the opening to the short hall that led to the unit’s front door. The covered light by the door was an old friend to her by now; she’d been here for more than half an hour, but the light was new and blinding to anyone who emerged from the main circular hall. Even a resident.

The shadow had stopped to try to figure out what, or who, she was. The shadow was a bit wary. She bet its heart had speeded up too, but not enough to match hers.

It moved toward her again. Not afraid, just puzzled.

The light hit Matt’s features. “Temple?”

“I heard your radio show tonight. It was good. You were good. You always are.”

“Thanks. But—”

She didn’t say anything else, just let him come closer.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

Matt lived to fix things that were wrong, you could hear that on his radio advice show. That’s why he was such a success, why droves of people called in, wanting his attention, his help, his wisdom, his caring, his voice, his touch. . . .

Except Temple knew now that he wanted her attention, her help, her wisdom, her caring, her voice, her touch. . . .

“Temple?”

It was like some damn jazz ballet in West Side Story, slow, dreamy, stagy, romantic as roses. It was driving her crazy.

He came closer. “What are you doing here?”

And then he saw her in the light. What she was wearing. Her explosive silence. What this meant.

His hand reached out, touched the small black buttons down the middle of her dress, the same fitted knit dress, long sleeved, long skirted, closed by black plastic buttons from throat to hemline, that she had worn to his awful stepfather’s funeral, a sort of sexual cassock. The very dress she’d worn when he’d melted down afterward. He’d ordered her to keep it. Matt. A man to ask, not to order. To wear it for him at some future time, when the time was right, ripe, for their separate truths and overheated instincts.

She’d unbuttoned the top eight buttons, not being a sadist.

He took in her, the dress, the hour, the place, the words not spoken, and acted.

She was in his arms, in a deep kiss, a tight embrace, as he unlocked the door and pushed their entwined bodies through it. He spun her back against the interior door and their union pushed it shut.

He turned the deadbolt with one hand while pulling her closer and walking her, backward, unerringly through the sinuous path of living room furniture to the bedroom door, which was shut.

There, he kissed his way down the undone buttons and undid a few more, and pushed the bedroom door open, then waltzed her through and kicked it shut behind him and shot another deadbolt—on a bedroom door? Perhaps a wise security device . . . for privacy at any rate.

There she managed a gasp and a few explanatory words. Like they were needed. “I thought it only right that you shouldn’t have to inaugurate your new bed by sleeping alone.”

“You’re after sleeping, are you?”

“Eventually.”

They fell together onto the bed, where he ripped the remaining buttons from their tight threaded nests. Temple heard a small plastic rainstorm of hail on the bleached wooden floor.

The bed was a ghostly galleon on a cloud-swept sea as they rocked together in the heart of a storm of their own making, and there was no going back to shore.

Temple tiptoed back to her own condo at five A.M. holding her buttonless dress together fairly unsuccessfully.

Her aunt Kit was awake, sipping cocoa at the kitchen counter.

“You’re out later than I was,” she observed. “Most impressive, but you are younger. Forgive my waiting up. An unexpected maternal spasm. Are you all right? That dress sure isn’t.”

“I can’t talk about it,” Temple said.

“Then to bed, as they say in Shakespeare, but you look like you already have been.”

Temple toddled into her bedroom, shut the door in Aunt Kit’s face, and let the dress fall to the floor. Her underthings and her emotions were in a twist, but the deed had not been done, despite mutual satisfaction on a scale most teenagers would consider quite satisfactory.

She’d gotten cold feet.

Her. Not him.

He’d told her everything. How hooked he’d been on her way, way back when. When they’d first met. His hands and voice had trembled, but she had too, because it was too much, this Perfect Storm. It could eat her alive.

There was nothing blasé about him.

This was the central event of his life. His love. Because he did. Love her. Always. Only. Had burned for her from the first, not understanding why he could think of nothing, no one else. Trying to pull his outward personality together. Trying to respect her wishes, her past alliances. Refraining from undermining Max. Trying even to relate to other women. Recognizing his sexual drive and still coming back, always and only, to her.

She’d never been so touched, so shaken. So . . . okay, Max was a great lover, but this was beyond any experience or anticipation. This shook her to her soul, which she apparently still had. And a conscience too. This maybe was the thing she couldn’t live without. Except . . . was she worthy?

The responsibility was numbing. She knew what to do, how to do it, where to do it, but not where it would lead. And it had to lead to something significant, something . . . holy, or it was a lie and cheat and she would die before she would be part of it.

So. She’d chickened out. Matt thought he needed a license, or to offer her the option of one.

She didn’t. She needed to believe in what he did. Herself. She’d blown it. Stopped the music when it was the most sublime and irresistible. Still, there was something to be said for coitus interruptus. Like increased desire. The Scarlett in her smiled in hapless helpless kittenish anticipation. Temple tumbled into bed, reliving every instant and enjoying it more with every rerun, even as she shied away from the ultimate truth.

She was headed for the dreaded sixty: better enjoy thirty while she could. But glib answers weren’t for her. Or Matt. Or Max. That’s what made them all worth something to each other. My God, they were an awesome triangle! That tripod couldn’t keep its balance forever. Could it? At some point, it would be only two, and one would be so alone, and off-balance and hurt.

Temple fell asleep, next waking in the morning light sifting through her bedroom miniblinds. Midnight Louie was snuggled up to her hip, black hair shiny and soft, clawless feet pummeling her back, all dark embracing domestic pet.

She remembered Max and burrowed under the dark of the covers and wept for an hour. She remembered Matt and wept for another hour. She was an equal opportunity wuss.

Until she realized Kit was knocking tentatively on her door, promising coffee, and she knew she had a life-changing decision to make PDQ and a disintegrating status quo to deal with ASAP and a job to do at twelve o’clock high. STAT.