Thank You!
My final solution was to put the node.js archive download under the same command:
RUN NODE_VERSION=$( \
curl -sL https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/ | \
tac | \
tac | \
grep -oPa -m 1 '(?<=node-v)(.*?)(?=-linux-x64\.tar\.xz)' | \
head -1 \
) \
&& echo $NODE_VERSION \
&& curl -SLO "https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/node-v$NODE_VERSION-linux-x64.tar.xz" -o "node-v$NODE_VERSION-linux-x64.tar.xz" \
&& curl -SLO "https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/SHASUMS256.txt.asc" \
&& gpg --batch --decrypt --output SHASUMS256.txt SHASUMS256.txt.asc \
&& grep " node-v$NODE_VERSION-linux-x64.tar.xz\$" SHASUMS256.txt | sha256sum -c - \
&& tar -xJf "node-v$NODE_VERSION-linux-x64.tar.xz" -C /usr/local --strip-components=1 \
&& rm "node-v$NODE_VERSION-linux-x64.tar.xz" SHASUMS256.txt.asc SHASUMS256.txt