Max leaned his weight against the shut front door, both ensuring its security and regretting the fact that it was shut more than anything in his life since Ireland.
“Lad?”
The voice behind him was tentative, almost cajoling.
He sighed and turned to face Gandolph.
The old man’s smooth fleshy face was riddled with wrinkles of anxiety.
“I apologize, Max. I’d no right to bring my sorry dead skin back into your life, to interfere with . . . the young and the living.”
“Save it, Garry.” Max pushed himself off the closed door, off the recent, regrettable past. “That sounds like the title of a TV soap opera: The Young and the Living. What does that make us? The Old and the Dead?”
“In my case, yes.”
“Well, you’re not dead yet.”
Gandolph chuckled. “Your position on my age is noted. Seriously, Max, she’s a lovely, lovely girl, inside and out. She’d have to be to win you from your self-imposed emotional exile. I would have found a discreet way to exit the house, believe me. There was no need to turn the lady out. Our cause may be noble, but it doesn’t require martyrdom of such a personal nature.”
“It’s not only your being here, and the need to keep your survival secret from the Synth. All that damn, difficult physical catching up on my acrobatic and magical skills. I don’t think I could do her justice tonight, and if Temple deserves anything of me, it’s justice.”
“Nonsense. You young men are so self-exacting. Women rarely demand as much as we believe they ought to. And you love her. That’s why you’re too proud to let her see any hint of weakness on your part. Pride, not weakness. And yet, pride is weakness.”
“Oh, shut up, Garry. You’re a great magician, but a lousy Ann Landers.”
“I believe she also is dead.”
“Does it matter? Her work, her column, goes on. And so does yours.”
“I hate having to stay undercover, letting you take all the risks.”
“If I bust the Synth, neither of us will have to worry about staying undercover again. Ever.”
“You’re now that convinced that they’re the key to the past, and our future?”
Max nodded. “Want a sandwich? There are plenty of fixings in the kitchen.”
“Sandwich?” Garry sniffed. Derisively. “Your young lady is a sweet little thing, but she has no culinary skills whatsoever.”
Max laughed. “You know what? Frankly, my dear Gandolph, I don’t give a damn.”
They retreated to the kitchen anyway, where Max chatted with his mentor while Garry whipped up an exotic hot dish that soothed his own soul and that Max had no appetite to taste.
Instead, Max drank way too much of costly dry, red wine.