Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing?”

“She may be employed by an enemy.”

“Beyond that.”

“Any reason why you should have slept alone last night, you mean?”

He nodded.

“You left the love of your life behind in Las Vegas when you crashed into the wall of a nightclub during an airborne magic act.”

Max stared at this man he was supposed to know, and trust.

“Good God! I was in Las Vegas? Not on some damn mountain? I knew I was never on a mountain! Damn mountains, particularly Alps. But, Garry, I had a . . . wife? Lover?”

“Yes and no. Even you realized you couldn’t commit to marriage while your life was in danger, and you finally told her that. Freed her just recently. You also told me if anything ever happened to you, I had a mission: to find the first woman who deceived you and gave you a grief you couldn’t lose and set you on the path of espionage.

“You were unconscious after that murder attempt in Vegas, and then amnesiac. I used every resource I had from our active espionage days to smuggle you out of the United States to the Swiss clinic. I even set it up so that your Las Vegas love saw your house emptied of all your possessions and occupied by a stranger.”

“That was brutal.”

“She’s a tenacious young woman. I needed to be brutal. Then I installed you in that Swiss clinic at great expense and manipulation and set about trying to trace Kathleen O’Connor. The Kathleen O’Connor from twenty years ago in Northern Ireland.”

“Kathleen O’Connor. The name means nothing.”

Garry’s now mustache-less face grimaced. “‘Kitty the Cutter’ is what your ex-girlfriend named her.”

“And what is the ex-girlfriend’s name?”

“Temple. Temple Barr.”

Max winced to remember kissing Revienne’s temple and feeling an odd tenderness, a moment of fugitive memory.

“Oh, God. Why didn’t I remember that there was someone?”

“You’d decided to let her go, Max. Another man loves her, one she became attracted to when you disappeared before, for almost a year. You knew it was too dangerous to associate with her when we were making inroads, finally, on uncovering the Synth.”

“The . . . sinth? Is that some Star Wars thing?”

Garry chuckled sadly. “So odd how you remember all the minutiae of our crazy modern world and nothing significant to your current situation and life. The Synth is a presumed international cadre of spies and magicians. That’s a very natural mating of interests, as you and I prove. We’re going to the airport, but we have a small private jet at our disposal, so we don’t risk exposure. I’ve got the proper forged passports. The flight will be long.”

“My duffle bag—” He wasn’t used to baggage and had dropped it at the scene.

“The musically inclined Hans scooped it up while we were tussling before pulling the car away. It’s on the front seat. Any weapons in it?”

“Just clothes and grooming items.”

“Apparently not a razor,” Gandolph commented dryly.

“Don’t you like my Pirates of the Caribbean look? It took a very expensive electric razor to cultivate this unkempt appearance.”

“The question is, did Dr. Schneider appreciate it?”

Max grew thoughtful. “I don’t suppose I care at the moment. How could I forget the ‘love of my life’?”

“Hopefully, or sadly, you may not forever. Meanwhile, we’re on the trail of the woman who ruined your life.”

“To extract justice?”

“She’s dead too.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“Closure,” Garry said.

Closure.

Maybe it took a memory to see any point in that, Max thought.

Dancing in the Dark

At night the underwater lights in the Circle Ritz backyard pool made the aquamarine rectangle gleam like a glimpse into Atlantis.

Temple sat in the temperate night air, on a lounge chair, watching Matt do his laps.

“Now I know what the expression ‘bronze god’ means,” she commented dreamily. “Will that spray-on tan fade fast?”

He lifted his wet head from the water, his blond hair silvered in the moonlight.

“I sure hope so. Why do you think I’m swimming in chlorine? I want to wash that dance show out of my hair and off my epidermis.”

“Why? You won.”

He dived and resurfaced at the edge near her chair, crossing his bronzed arms on the edge to hold himself up.

“Yeah, and the show raised $180,000 for the kids’ cancer fund, so it was worth the hassle, although not the attempts on my life. And that doesn’t include being mobbed by tween girls from thirteen to ninety-three after the final show.”

“It was great that Glory B. won the women’s vote. She was so grateful. You could see her maturing on the spot. What a wonderful moment. All the contenders won something—self-confidence, renewal, fresh job opportunities.”

“Fresh commercial temptations.”

“So your perfectly highlighted blond head hasn’t been turned?”

“Lord, they want me to do spray-tan TV ads.”

“You’d make more money for good causes, including a house fund maybe.”