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  "I can think of worse men to be mired with."

  "How do you know?"

  "I've been mired with them. The worse men, that is."

  "It's so . . . serious nowadays. With AIDS. Max and I have a tremendous investment in our relationship. Almost two years of monogamy, if you count our six months in Minnesota waiting out the AIDS tests, and the six-month honeymoon in Las Vegas and then another six months of separation."

  "Two years? Tremendous?"

  "It is! If you want to be real and don't want to take risks."

  "And while he was mysteriously away?"

  "He says he was faithful. I know I was."

  "You believe him?"

  Temple stared into the wine's garnet depths. A wine with body seemed thick, like blood. Certainly thicker than water. The wine left a viscous slick on the glass if you tilted the container, then leveled it again. Playing with your drink was always a sign of indecision.

  "I don't know what to believe about Max Kinsella nowadays, even what he tells me himself. But fidelity? That I believe. I'd stake my life on it."

  "Temple, you're being seriously inconsistent!"

  She shrugged. "C'est la vie"

  "How do you know Max is that reliable?"

  "Because I never even considered telling those creeps who were beating me where he was, and wouldn't have, even if I had known, and I'm no . . . Joan of Arc. There are some betrayals neither of us is ready to make yet."

  "This is not logical."

  "No, that's how I can be so sure. But just about that."

  "What about Matt Devine?"

  "Oooh, worse conundrum even than Max."

  "Temple, you're obsessing over this stuff. This stalking woman, and the two men in your life. You're young. Go with your heart."

  "You can't nowadays, Kit. You don't know. You didn't grow up in the age of AIDS, when you knew all about it by junior high school. Half the men in the U.S. who die between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four die of AIDS. Think of how many 'eligible' guys are exposed, and arc out feeling immortal, exposing new partners. Just because you're from an older generation who's pretty much out of it--"

  "Oops. Beg your pardon. I'm not entirely out of it. I have hopes, even at my advanced age, which you'll see when you get there."

  "If I get there."

  "I had no idea you kids were taking this so seriously."

  "This one is. That's why I'm hamstrung. Reason says stay with Max, where we've both invested ourselves. But there's so much he's hidden from me . . . and Matt--"

  "Matt you don't know well enough to trust when he reports his safety record." Kit nodded sagely.

  "That's just the trouble. I do know his background all too well."

  "And he got around pretty thoroughly. Well, that's natural with his looks--"

  Temple laughed bitterly.

  "That laugh would do so well in Private Lives," Kit, the casting director, said. "But you're not brittle enough to play Amanda yet," her aunt added. "Wait till you're thirty-five."

  "You don't understand."

  "Maybe not. But I understand more than you think about all this." Kit leaned over to refill her glass.

  Perhaps they were getting a bit sloshed, Temple thought, but it was just us girls ... we girls? And Midnight Louie, and he didn't seem to be listening to a darn thing they said "Just how damn old do you think I am?" Kit's eyes were schoolteacher-stern over her incongruously kicky metallic-framed half-glasses.

  "Mom's nearly seventy." Temple idly rotated her ankle until one bedroom slipper lived up to its name and floated to the floor. When she felt Kit had been held in suspense long enough, she added, "you've got to be sixty-something."

  "That's right. And that's not the end of the world for the libido either. Sixty doesn't look so bad once you've managed to get there. And I didn't get here the same way your mother did. I'm not your mother, Temple, but I'm going to give you a crash course in Life 101A."

  Temple swallowed, but not wine. Somehow she'd irritated her aunt, without meaning to. Now here came the lecture that was one of the few perquisites of age.

  "You know I left Minnesota for New York to become an actress. Just nod or shake your head, and I'll fill in. You don't have to say a thing. This is my monologue. Well. Here I am in the Big City, my Midwestern cheeks rosy, my miniskirt not nearly as short as the ones on the streets of New York, my hair blowin' in the wind and long enough to touch the bottom of my miniskirt."

  Kit took in the tribute of Temple's widened eyes and settled back into her pillows, her foggy-bottom voice growing more reflective.

  "It was the sixties, the age of rebellion and rabble-rousing. Make love, not war. A revolutionary concept, and my own generation's invention. We appeared nude in Hair. Some of us burned flags. Some of us burned pot. Some of us burned the candle at both ends, usually ours. Can you imagine what it was like to plunge into this sociopolitical-sexual insurrection away from home? The city was our circus, our arena, our life. We were young and we were going to star on Off-Broadway and drink ouzo at four in the morning and walk alone at midnight through Central Park and smoke dope in front of a TV camera and make love with whoever we felt like. So we did."

  "We? You mean the generation, not you personally."

  "Do I?"

  "I mean, Aunt Kit, you weren't, uh, promiscuous?"

  "Not in my own mind. I was in the forefront of a revolution, a happy campaigner. I was smashing taboos, stamping out repression, having fun."

  "You couldn't have had that kind of fun! You were from the Midwest."

  "Honey. Big-time repression brings big-time rebellion. It isn't a coincidence that the Times Square area with the most underage hookers was known in the seventies and eighties as the 'Minnesota Strip.' "

  "I heard about that. I mean, in high school. But I didn't really believe it."

  "Nobody believes reality. That's why there are-- ta-dah! --actors."

  Temple frowned and sipped judiciously from her glass, thinking that it was about time she sipped judiciously.

  "But women then weren't that careless--"

  You know Garrison Keillor's hallmark description of Like Wobegon?"

  "Lake Wobegon! That name is such a priceless satire--'where the women are Strong and the men are good-looking...' "

  Kit shook her head, "The women in my day were never strong. They were just well controlled."

  "You're saying you were--"

  "Taken for a revolutionary ride. Used. Again. I was too busy being an artiste to get in the protest movements more than superficially, but when women started waking up from the sexual revolution and took a look at what they did during the civil-rights and Vietnam-protest wars, Mommy, it was manning the coffee and mimeograph machines--a primitive sixties duplicating device, kid--worshiping at the feet of the male gurus who made the speeches and smoked the dope, and scrubbing the floors with their backs. Why do you think women's lib was the last liberal movement of the trio to come along?"

  "I didn't think about any of this. They never taught it in school, except very generally."

  "These are not things that are taught in school."

  "But now you're writing historical romance novels. Isn't that a tad unliberated?"

  "Maybe. Maybe not. What women do is always labeled unimportant unless it's in imitation of what men do. Then it's labeled ball-busting."

  "Kit, you shock me."

  "It's the wine talking. Want some more?"

  "Umm ... just a little. I think I see what you're saying. Thanks to AIDS, women have a chance to say no to exploitation."

  "If they'll take it. And I don't think being scared too silly to live is an answer either."

  "Then what is?"

  "Women making sure that sex is safe. I do respect the longevity of your arrangement with Max. But it wasn't a marriage, Temple. He left, you're free to love again."

  "Nothing's ever really free." Temple looked at her glass, surprised that it had refilled almost to the brim. She sipped it down to belo
w the spill level. "Kit, I probably wouldn't tell you this without having had the wine ..."

  "Yes?" Kit looked politely out of focus at the couch's other end.

  "And I'm only telling you because you live on the other side of the country and you'll probably never visit Las Vegas again, or meet any of the principals."

  "Principals? Are you talking like a lawyer, Temple?"

  I'm hedging like a lawyer, because I'm about to break a confidence, and I wouldn't do it, except I don't know what to think and I could use some advice from someone who doesn't know anybody who's involved . . . personally, that is. Except for me, of course."

  "Of course," Kit assured her in far too well enunciated syllables.

  Temple had committed the impossible and didn't notice. "You see, the reason Matt's such a dicey romantic partner--"

  "Yes?"

  "--is he's a priest. Or was until very recently."

  "Priest. The Power and the Glory kind, not the pleasant chap in England with the collar and the manse and the wife and kiddies?"

  "You always go to plays. Yes, the Graham Greene Catholic kind, only he doesn't drink. Except socially a little. And not as much as this," Temple added, squinting at the contents of her glass because the claret color looked so much richer a little out of focus.

  "Or do anything, if I've got the religion right." Kit carefully set her wine glass on the cocktail table and put her hands on her akimbo knees. In the long caftan, she resembled an Eastern guru a bit, and Yoda from Star Wars a bit. The hiccup was just a small distraction.

  "You are telling me that the man is a virgin."

  Temple nodded.

  "And looks like that?"

  Temple nodded.

  "Wait a minute! He is heterosexual?"

  Temple nodded.

  "But he never--?"

  Temple nodded.

  Kit leaned back and sighed. "How can you be sure of all the afore -saids?"

  "I've been around a little, in my modest post-sixties way."

  "Then grab him."

  "It's not so simple, Kit, as you were just reminding me a while ago. What brought him to this position has to be dealt with. Then, he's still Catholic, and if you think about what that religion doesn't let you do ... if I married Matt I could have fifteen kids! Easy."

  "That's right. No birth control." Kit leaned forward. "You could be sterile."

  "I think the- word for women is 'infertile,' and I wouldn't bet on it."

  "He could be infertile."

  "I think you mean sterile. And I wouldn't bet on that either"

  "Does he want fifteen kids?"

  "I don't think so, but he'd have to abandon his entire faith, not just the priesthood, to have anything like a normal sex life. So all is not gold that glitters."

  " 'All that glisters is not gold,' " Kit corrected her absently.

  Temple recognized the corrected quote from The Merchant of Venus . . . Venice!

  "All right." Kit grew stern when she drank. "Basics. Who do you love?"

  "I loved Max madly . . . until he left without a word."

  "And, and ..." Kit's left hand flopped in circles, but no name came. "And the other guy?"

  "I like him tremendously. I respect him." Kit's face was growing grim. "And I'm madly attracted to him."

  "Hmmm. If I were to cut one in half, which would you prefer?"

  "That old Solomon trick doesn't work with two objects of affection, Kit. Do you want me to make some coffee?"

  "And ruin our wonderful session of girl talk? No way. Let's see. If Max came home to stay and wanted to get married and didn't want to have fifteen kids, could you be happy with him?"

  "Probably, but--"

  "Then it appears to me that what Matt needs is right in this room."

  "I beg your pardon? I thought I was happily married to Max, who no more will roam?"

  "You are. But I have the perfect solution to Matt's problems."

  "You do?"

  "Sure. Me."

  "You?"

  "Too old to get preggers, dear. Just what the poor lad needs. Nice experienced menopausal lady with ambition. Not too over the hill. I even look a little like you. What more could he want?"

  Temple picked up her fallen bedroom slipper and heaved it at Kit.

  Unfortunately, it hit Midnight Louie, who started awake and tore off the couch and across the cocktail table, which overturned Kit's carefully placed glass, which spilled its red, red wine all over Kit's handsome area rug, which Kit and Temple spent the next half hour soaking and soaping in this vale of tears.

  Whether they were tears of rue or tears of laughter only the wine remembers.

  Louie had retreated someplace secret and invisible where cats go when people are too below them to notice.

  Chapter: Letter to Louise, Part 1

  Being the Meditations of Midnight Louie in New York City

  Ancient history is only interesting when it is one's own. I cannot tell you how many son-of-a son-of-a's have strutted their hour upon the stage of life during the thirty-something years my two little dolls had under discussion recently.

  I mean, when I say I go way back, I go way back to Egyptian times, but only thanks to the intervention of countless generations between then and now.

  It is so unfair. My species is superior in many ways, but has definitely been short-sheeted in the longevity department. There are even some spiders that live as long as our eldest examples, big hairy black spiders too, like tarantulas. There are birds even, who outlive us by decades. I refer to the parrot family, which not only hangs around obnoxiously long, but are prized for their aping of human speech. This does not mean that they have the brains to shell a peanut, only an ear for idiocy and the knack of repeating it, which is how some very respectable human careers got started, if you pause to think about it.

  But I am in a sober mood after lying about absorbing the sturm und drang Miss Temple Barr and Miss Kit Carlson are slinging and sloshing around. Perhaps the Christmas season produces reflections of a nostalgic and familial nature.

  Me, I thought the point of the holiday was getting time off work, a chance to collect lots of presents and an excuse to eat oneself into a stupor. And look at me, I have been uprooted and transported to a city so big that I must be carted about from pillar to post for my own physical and sanitary safety ... I am engaged in the most crucial competition of my new-born performing career,... and I am not offered so much as a saucer of wine sauce after my long hard day at the office.

  So I slink off when the opportunity arises, which it does pretty soon after Miss Kit uncorks her shockingly mediocre bottle of wine. I retreat to Miss Temple's and my room, which, in addition to the presence of a nice queen-size bed for the both of us, features a computer setup by the window.

  Despite myself, I am in a reflective mood, so I hop up to inspect the keyboard. It is the usual expanse of letters and numbers interspersed by arcane keys bearing such titles as "Pig Up" "Pig Down" and "Esc," which must be short for escalator and "Alt," which must be short for Altitude, because there are a bunch of F keys with numbers next to them, like F7 et cetera, and I believe those are designations of fighter planes or some such.

  Many are the mysteries of the computer, but I do not sweat the small stuff. I know my ABCs and I know where the turn-on buttons are.

  In this case the critter is only dozing on low power, so I give the big round mouse ball a bat or two, and the screen--a tasteful arrangement of flying toasters that I am tempted to have some fun with--is replaced by an image I well recognize: lines of words.

  This is my mode, although I do not use the excessive number of exclamation points I see before me. Miss Kit Carlson's newest novel must be stalled in the middle of either an action scene or a sex scene. Only sex and violence merit this plethora of exclamations, in my experience, vicarious as it may be when it comes to human variations of such basic instincts.

  So I paw the keys until the smeary or smoochy stuff is off the screen and I have a fresh expanse o
f gray.

  It is hard to get up to writing speed on a foreign keyboard, but I soon get the hang of it and my agile pads are pounding out whatever crosses my mind, which is a letter to my ingrate offspring, Midnight Louise.

  "Dear Daughter," I begin.

  Well, it is a literaryative, but I am not sure I want to give the chit a legal claim on my worldly goods, especially now that I am on the brink of a media career breakthrough. Midnight Louise is likely to take a mile when she is offered an inch.

  "Dear Miss Midnight Louise,"

  No. Sounds submissive.

  "Dear Distant Relative,"

  Too cool for Christmas.

  "Dear Girlie,"

  That will get me four sharp ones across the nose.

  "To whom it may concern,"

  There, a nice lawyerly approach, no admissions, no obligations.

  "I am here in the nation's most impressive metropolis for the holidays, and thought I should kill occupy some time by sending a post card without a picture. You know what I look like and you can always look up New York City in the library if you want pictures.

  "Now that 'tis the season for reconciliation and all that mush, it has occurred to me that perhaps we do not understand each other. You do not seem fully impressed by my new (involuntary, it is true) state of reproductive restraint, and still seem to blame me for your presence on this planet.

  "Frankly, I agree that the planet might be better off without you, but times change and even a surly, accusatory offspring who has snared her own (possibly) daddy's old job has a role in the overall plan, no doubt.

  "I know that you are bitter because you believe that I deserted you and the other litter lice, not to mention your mama, at a bad time. What makes you think that I even knew you were a mote on the Mo-jave desert's vast sandbox under the sky?

  "Your mama could have kept the advent of you and your siblings hush-hush, you know, for reasons of her own, such as not wanting to tie down such a magnificent specimen of feline free spirit as myself. Perhaps she saw that I was destined for greater things than wiping snotty little noses with these talented mitts.