Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“So you two talk about me?”

“Sometimes.”

“And?”

“She said you’d really settled into that over-the-top city. That you had some key clients and a lot of friends. She particularly mentioned a big Italian family named Fontana that had given you a lot of PR commissions. I was so glad to hear that.”

Oh, Aunt Kit, you devil you. Her mother was imagining a “Mamma Mia knows best” clan when the sophisticated Fontanas were Vegas venue owners and more like the Sopranos, but in a good way.

Obviously, Kit hadn’t mentioned she herself had recently married the eldest of the mob of dreamy Fontana brothers. Their dark Italian good looks, attired in pale Ermenegildo Zegna designer suits, had become a Vegas brand for smooth, single, and sexy.

Temple understood why her aunt had kept mum with Karen. Kit had been a New York City single until sixty and then had married a younger man. Aldo Fontana was a much younger man. If Temple didn’t have her own guy, she’d consider her aunt an ideal role model.

“Well, I’m used to having big brothers,” Temple said, thinking of her hulking outdoorsy four, “and there are ten Fontana brothers.”

“Mamma mia. Those Italians do reproduce! But I’m glad you still have ‘older brothers’ to take you under their wings.”

“Sometimes, Mom. I take them under my wing.”

Sometimes family couldn’t see you as independent and grown up, particularly if you were the youngest and only daughter of five.

“Say, speaking of big families,” Temple said, “I never did find out why you and Dad had so many of us. A little out of step with the ‘small footprint’ philosophy of the times, although I’ve seen my birth footprint and it was tiny.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I suppose it was because we really wanted a daughter.”

“You mean you were holding out for a girl the way families always used to hold out for a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Way more liberated of you than I suspected, Mom.”

“Thank you. I think. So who is this someone you want us to meet?”

“Well, duh. My fiancé.”

A really long pause. The family had met Max, but had not been so enamored as Temple. No one could have been as enamored as much as Temple at that point, but her family would have resented anyone who’d take her out of the Twin Cities, especially to someplace as glitzy as Vegas.

“So it’s not that magician?” I suggested cautiously.

“His name is Max.”

“‘Is’?”

“Well, sure. He’s still alive and well”—just barely—“in Las Vegas.”

“So there’s someone new?”

Somehow that made Temple sound fickle. “Not so new. He lives here at the Circle Ritz too.”

“I always think of a Western movie when I hear that name for your apartment building.”

“Condo. I’m building equity.”

“So it’s over with … the magician?”

Temple smiled, sure that epithet for Max had originated with her dad. There was nothing Midwestern about Max except his origins, and that was an unforgivable strike against him in stable Minnesota.

“Pretty much.”

“Not totally?”

“Yes, totally.”

“So who will we be meeting?”

“His name is Matt. He’s a couple years older than I am. He works in the communications business.”

“That seems a good compatibility factor. Where is he from?”

“Chicago.” The capital of the upper Midwest.

“Oh,” This time the “oh” was stretched out on a rising scale of approval. For gosh sakes again, Max had been born in Wisconsin. Everybody was practically neighbors.

“Yes,” Temple said. “We were just in Chicago to get together with his family.”

“You were that close and you didn’t swing up here?”

“Matt’s job makes longer trips impossible.”

“What is his job?”

“Radio.”

“A disappearing medium, isn’t it?”

“Not for Matt. He’s syndicated.”

“So when can you and this Matt come up?”

“In the next few weeks. I’m checking to see about family vacations.”

“Your brothers go camping now and again in the summer. It’d be easier if you set a date and we go from there.”

“I don’t want to interfere with any expeditions.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t. The boys wouldn’t miss meeting the new guy.”

Temple rolled her eyes. She bet they wouldn’t. They’d always had to hassle her dates from junior high on. One thing about Max. Nobody hassled him. They could try, but it never worked.

“It would be a quick trip,” she warned. “Matt works nights.”

“Not another one! Sorry. It’s your business. I was just … surprised.”

“Gosh, Mom. This is Vegas. It’s such a twenty-four-hour town, it has its own time zone.”

“Seriously?”

“No, just exaggerating for effect. I do that a lot in my job. So, we’re good. I’ll check with Matt and we’ll figure a time to visit that works for you all.”

“Fine, but … wait.”

“Yes?”

“What’s the young man’s last name?”

“Want to check him out on Facebook, Mom?” Temple teased.

“I don’t much go on there.”

Temple smiled. It was a miracle that her mother was familiar with social media at all.

“It’s Devine.”

“I’m sure you think everything about him is, dear.”

“Of course, but that’s the last name.”

“Devine?” This pause was the longest yet. “Not the Matt Devine.”

“Well, he is to me.”

“Temple, don’t be coy. You’re not really with that darling guy from the Amanda Show?”