Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "Give it to a girlfriend to frame."

  "You don't really want it?"

  "Why not? It's obvious that you don't, which means you won't take very good care of it, and it's too nice to waste. She really did a fabulous job for an off-the-cuff session. Even caught that cute little worry line at your left eyebrow. Come on, Matt, you have to feel a little bit flattered!

  You look mah-velous! I bet she thought so too."

  He reached for the paper. "I don't want it--"

  Temple kept it in custody.

  One corner tore off.

  She stopped smiling and he suddenly sat back on the sofa, far from the two pulp-paper portraits side by side on the coffee table.

  "I haven't had a photograph taken since I left St. Rose of Lima. I'm not used to seeing myself.

  Or to seeing how other people see me."

  "You need to get over that," Temple said seriously. "You can't know somebody else until you know yourself. You really need to be a teensy bit vainglorious about being so handsome. It's only human."

  "I know that. I know what I look like. But I don't like seeing what it does. It's not just the portrait, it's the . . . context."

  "What happened?"

  "Nancy Drew is right. You know something happened. You're worse than a mother or a ... a nun."

  "Thank you. Actually, after my almost-close encounter with Darren Cooke, it's rather reassuring to be compared to a mother or a nun. I was beginning to think I was a bimbo."

  "What did you really resent about that, Temple? That he thought you were cute?"

  "Aha, that's just it. I didn't have to be cute, I didn't have to be me, I just had to be female and to be there."

  "So if Darren Cooke had fallen instantly in love with you, it would have been all right."

  "Well, better. But he didn't, and it wasn't."

  "How do you know he wasn't genuinely attracted to you?"

  It was an honest question. Temple thought about it. "His reputation. His lack of constancy."

  "But that can change."

  "Not for him. He's a confirmed womanizer. Woman, generic term. Not me, not Savannah, not his lovely wife. Who, by the way, is a famous model."

  "How do you know? How do you know what someone is feeling, and why and how genuine the emotion is?"

  Temple spread her hands. "From living and watching, and trying to sort out the fake from the real in yourself as well as in others. From being a fool sometimes, and being too afraid to be a fool other times."

  Matt nodded at his portrait. "You think she liked me."

  Temple studied it more intently. "I think she was attracted to you. That's why you shy away from the evidence. She made you look a little too sexy for your own peace of mind."

  "But not yours."

  Temple grinned. "Never. So who, or what, is she? And what did she do to you?"

  "Nothing, I imagine, which only makes it worse. Do I get any of that cocoa or not?"

  That sent Temple to the kitchen to warm up her now-cold cup and make a second mug. By the time she came back, the two drawings were rolled together, both safely out of sight.

  "I mean it, Matt. I don't want you abusing that drawing. Most of us never get captured in pen and ink."

  "Maybe it's just as well. It's funny. You know what she said her business consisted of? Family portraits and criminal reconstructions. Pretty extreme, huh?"

  "It's like Chekhov said about happy families: they're all alike. I bet she enjoys putting criminals on paper more."

  Matt looked at the rolled drawings. "Speaking of extremes, we both have had similar reactions to extremely different situations. Maybe you should tell me about life and love and sex in the secular world. I think I'm ready."

  Temple tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. "It'll be what I think, what I've seen, and there won't be anything religious about it."

  Matt nodded. He knew what prescription he needed when he heard it.

  Temple grinned. "You're not really ready, but you never will be if you don't figure this out.

  Okay."

  She sat forward in her usual presentation posture: outwardly composed, professional, possibly even a tad perky. Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show had hated perky almost as much as he had hated spunky, but what was a single working woman to do but put a bright face on an uphill struggle?

  Recalling that show brought back memories of her and Max, bad ghosts to haunt a serious discussion with another man in another place and time.

  Temple took a deep breath. "Look at us. We're both unmarried, relatively young--will you grant attractive? Me, at least?"

  "Oh, yeah! You're fine .. . you're ah--"

  "And you're searching for words other than 'cute.' "

  He made a defeated face. "You are pretty cute."

  "Okay, but I don't have a face that would launch a thousand magazine ads, that makes people stop dead in their tracks. On a scale of one to ten, maybe a seven. You, whether you like it or not, are a nine and a half."

  He made another distasteful face, but waited for her point.

  "So here we sit, free to be anything but celibate, and what are we whining about? Being surprised by unexpected sexual overtures. Why? We ought to be at least flattered. And maybe tempted. We certainly shouldn't be surprised. What is the matter with us?"

  Matt frowned as if trying to get a tough test answer right. "These were ... spur-of-the-moment situations with virtual strangers. We're not that casual."

  "Why not?"

  "My background, religious and social."

  "Obviously. But I don't have your background. So ignore yours for a moment. You said you liked this artist. You admit you found her attractive. You almost admitted that you might have liked the idea if you hadn't been so shocked."

  "I can't ignore the fact that it doesn't seem right--"

  "But it did seem a little exciting?"

  He was silent for a while. "It showed me a world I'd never thought about. Nice people meeting and moving right to the bedroom. Ordinary people. For a moment that looked easier, maybe even more romantic than going through all the stumbling steps of building a relationship."

  "Instant attraction. Instant love affairs. It's in all the movies. And it's out there. You haven't seen it because your vocation was a shield."

  "Not from everything. Women were always trying to flirt with me."

  "But. . . now you're noticing that you can flirt back."

  "You mean, before I never would have noticed what she was implying? No, I'm just a vain fool. I must have imagined the undertones."

  "No. Darren Cooke only had to say, 'You could stay,' in a certain way, and I saw the whole scenario from beginning to end. You can't build a court case on body language, or tone of voice or unsaid messages. But anyone who's been around a while, who's available, will notice them.

  It's only natural."

  "I've never thought of myself as available. But you were going to make a point about being available and not being available."

  "Yes. Anyone who's really committed to someone--or something--else won't hear or see the signals. You won't be looking, so people will sense that and won't look at you that way. Even if they still indicate an interest, you'll deny it, dismiss it, show surprise. Because you really aren't in the market. Happy longtime paired couples are like that. Priests and nuns make vows to be like that. And then there's everyone else."

  "So why were you as surprised as I was, even offended?"

  "Were you offended?"

  "No." He thought again. "Scared."

  Temple laughed. "Someday you won't be scared anymore, and then what will you do?"

  "You're dodging the issue of Darren Cooke."

  "I suppose. Maybe it's because girls are hit on by guys they'd never date, much less sleep with, at an early age. Maybe it's because in the working world, women are still considered fair game. We get touchy. We demand sincerity. We just want to do our jobs and not get hassled.

  Most of us tune out to sexual feelings on the job.


  "I have to admit that I was flattered to be invited to Darren Cooke's Beautiful People brunch, that I was flattered to be consulted by him. I thought I was being taken at face value, not Face value. So I was angry at his sexual suggestion, and the fact that his way of life relies on using women like facial tissues, one snatched from the box after another, then discarded.

  "If he's your caller, and even if he isn't, he's a sexual addict. Anyone involved with suc h a person becomes a victim. I don't like being singled out as a potential victim. He's a sick man, and part of his sickness is that he's so charming about it."

  "You don't criticize Janice like that."

  Temple shrugged. "That's different. Personally, it annoys me, but what happened, or what you think almost happened, is understandable."

  "Understandable? You walk into a woman's house, and two hours later she's ready to sleep with you?"

  Temple sipped cold cocoa. It was hard to give sex-education talks to a man you were attracted to. It made her feel like a big sister, at least. She could see where parents went white at the idea. Ethics and realism had to blend, and the result couldn't help but be confusing.

  "Look at what you told me about her. She's divorced, probably had a decent financial situation before, but now is struggling to keep up the house and take care of the kids she got custody of in the divorce. Maybe her husband was well-off, but a jerk. Maybe he was a nice guy but they changed in different ways. Maybe he abused her. You can't know. But she's attractive and spending all her time being Mama and Artist. Maybe she can't consider a serious relationship because of the kids and the ex-husband and bad examples. So the kids are away at computer camp for once, right? And in walks this nice guy, nice-looking too, and maybe the physical type that pushes her buttons, which are getting a little rusty. So ... she could do worse; what would it hurt?"

  "Leave out the morality, what about disease? She didn't know my background. The risk--"

  "--was maybe worth it to her. And from the persnickety house you described, you can bet safe sex would have been practiced. She's not crazy, just lonely. Maybe she hasn't had sex in a year. Or two. Or more. And there you are, looking like the angel Gabriel."

  "But, why me? Why not the delivery man, or an old friend?"

  "Different social class, or maybe her old male friends are all married. Look at your hands. No rings. Besides, most men your age have developed some line or another, something slightly false to get through. You're absolutely honest. Oh, baby, you are the answer to a maiden's prayer."

  Temple tented prayerful fingers. " 'Course they don't know you've got some growing-up to do."

  "Is that why you ... showed an interest in me? Max was gone and you were alone, and I was there, this naively honest fool?"

  "Partly. I felt guilty about being attracted to you. Yes! Non-Catholics feel guilty sometimes too. I felt disloyal to Max, even though he'd disappeared without a word, which is fairly disloyal behavior in a relationship. But there's that third factor, besides opportunism and personal emptiness. There's Mother Nature's little elixir: hormones, infatuation, inexplicable instant rapport.

  "Society says it should operate only under certain conditions for certain available people, but it doesn't.

  "And," she went on, "because it's always there, we could all be playing with fire all the time.

  People like Darren Cooke get hooked on the built-in excitement of the first time so much that their first times are also always the last times. Then it's always the hunt and the capture and surrender, then the next game. That way everyone is a challenge, everyone strikes sparks, and these people are always in a state of sexual anticipation. It dominates their lives like cocaine.

  They need more and more, and end up emptier with every hit. It's a fun fantasy, but a bad trip in real life."

  "I don't know if I want to live in real life," Matt said glumly. "The choices are worse than I imagined, even in the confessional back at St. Stan's."

  "Worse in what way?"

  "Not clear-cut."

  "No-no's are always clear-cut. It's saying yes to life that's sticky."

  "You and Max . . . have you--?"

  "No. I've thought about it. He says he was faithful when he was gone. I believe him about that."

  "That's trust."

  Temple nodded solemnly. "That's what we had, before."

  "And now?"

  "Now ... something valuable's lost."

  "That's sad."

  "Yes, it is. And every relationship is that delicately balanced."

  "About my ... encounter. It occurred to me I might be able to get it over with easily, with no second thoughts or stricken conscience until afterward, and that it would be worth it to be on equal footing with him, with you. To not be this . . . freak anymore."

  He finally looked up at her, worried.

  "You really considered sacrificing yourself to this woman for me?" Temple was rhapsodic.

  "That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. But sex is much too good to ever just 'get it over with.' Or to spend on an uncaring stranger. You're being human, Matt. Insecure and anxious and a little competitive. That's a very good sign."

  "If this is progress, I may not survive it."

  "Teenagers do."

  "Are you and Max surviving it?"

  That one she couldn't answer.

  Chapter 15

  To Yvette, in Prison

  Miss Temple may be prepared to mope her days and nights away, but I do not intend to stick around to be her crying pillow. Saltwater has never done a thing for my topcoat.

  Also, I am not torn between two felines. There is only one polestar in my cat heaven, one feline in my firmament, one star on my astral plane, one comet on my tail and one meteor in my mind.

  I refer, of course, to the Divine Yvette.

  These last few days of working together have been sadly lacking. Here we are, the image of onscreen togetherness, yet off-screen we are kept behind convent grilles (okay, it is just a carrier grille, but the effect is the same).

  Although we are to emote next week in various "location" shots around town, I am no longer willing to settle for a whisker-rub under six-thousand kilowatts of spotlight. I decide to break my darling out of her unnatural confinement for a night on the town.

  This will be one of my hardest assignments.

  By keeping my ears open while appearing to doze, I have learned that Yvette and her mistress, Miss Savannah Ashleigh, are sharing a suite at the Goliath, paid for by the Yummy Tum-tum-tummy/Free-to-be-Feline/A La Cat conglomerate. (Can you imagine, one company makes all these different products? Hard to believe that the loathsomely nutritional Free-to-be-Feline and the tasty Yummy Tum-tum-tummy spring from the same corporate culture, so to speak.)

  I am most indignant on my mistress's behalf. Simply because she is a Las Vegas resident, she is being bilked out of expensive accommodations during the shoot. I think the cat-glop people owe her at least a good dinner out. But that is her problem.

  Mine is more insurmountable, quite literally. I will have to breech the Goliath security system (which I hope consists only of stone knives, in keeping with their ancient-civilization theme), discover which rooms house my petite princess and spring her without anyone being the wiser. And let he who casts the first stone be called Michelangelo's David.

  Getting out of the Circle Ritz is the usual snap. Getting over to the Goliath on the Strip is the usual car-, bus- and van-dodging trip. Getting into the Goliath is the usual hanging out by the kitchen service door and darting in under cover of a cart. Just call me cat A La Carte.

  Luckily, I am making my moves at night, when my dark topcoat makes me all but invisible.

  Unluckily, the lobby is one of those over-lit, open expanses of white marble, saffron carpet, gilded lilies and upholstered furniture so pale that a shaded-silver Persian cat hair would show up on it, not to mention my own svelte dark form.

  So I attach myself to various arriving parties, dashing along in the shadow of their duffel b
ags and rolling valets, wishing for a brief, minor power failure from Hoover Dam to the Valley of Fire.

  Besides, such a power outage might inspire some work of cinematic art. If they made such a fuss about the night the lights went out in Dixie and the night the power failed in New York City (resulting in a higher birthrate nine months later), think of what would happen if the lights went out in Vegas, the city that never nods off? Now there is a disaster-flick plot for any bright bulb who wants to take it from me.

  Some might say that I am a trifle selfish for wishing a town wide blackout so that I can visit an amour, but whoever they are, they are not here and I do not worry about them.

  What I worry about is finding Miss Yvette's room number, particularly since she is not registered under her own name.

  As in most Vegas hostelries, the registration desk is a hornet's nest of activity.

  However, since this hotel, in particular, wishes to convey an atmosphere of desert luxe, a number of potted palms are sprinkled around the tomblike lobby. The pots actually serve my purposes better than the palms. It is from the shade of just such a gargantuan container that I spot a subspecies on the premises.

  This is a terrier known as a Westie, a brighter-than-the-usual-dim-bulb-dog, that is also something of a terror, being from a rather bossy breed. I ankle over to the party, which also consists of a man and a woman who are checking to see if they have any mail. Ah, veterans. Just what I need. I force myself to rub ingratiatingly on the Westie's furry white side.

  "Hi, fella. Been staying at this dump long?"

  I get a growl and a snort (a Scottish snort; I recognize the accent from my association with Baker and Taylor, the Scottish fold cats, on a previous case)." Tis no dump, you blathering numbskull, an' verra expensive as weel."

  "Just wondered if you spotted a sleek little number who travels in pink. Shaded-silver Persian a little darker than yourself."

  "More of your sort? I had no idea the hotel provided so much sport for its canine guests. I have, in fact, sniffed some sort of vermin being carted to and fro. I took it for an Angora guinea pig."