Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  She reached into the bag at her feet, then slapped something to the marble tabletop.

  After Temple finished recoiling, she pulled the object, a fat paperback book, to her side of the table.

  The smooth raised surface of its title lettering felt like gigantic Braille beneath her fingertips. "Sulah Savage . . . Night of a Thousand Stars, " she read aloud. "You? You're Sulah Savage?"

  Aunt Ursula sipped and inhaled in happy sequence. "You've heard of her!"

  "Not until now."

  "Oh. She's doing quite well. I considered using 'Sue,' but it didn't have the proper ring. Much too Buddy Holly. Certainly 'Ursula Carlson' wasn't going to sell books, or anything else. Why on earth did they name me that?"

  "Why on earth did they pass it on to me?" Temple leaned across the table. "There's this odious man in town--"

  "Only one? That's not the Las Vegas I expected."

  "The only one I know. He's always calling me by my initials, like I was a disease."

  "Ah. T.B."

  "Right. I live in absolute dread that he'll learn my middle name."

  "T.U.B. Not the image a forward-looking young woman wants to cultivate in this age of low-fat everything, including, one presumes, initials. What is your line of work, anyway?"

  "I used to be a local TV reporter."

  "Thespian blood, I knew it!"

  "Then I became PR director for the Guthrie Theatre."

  "Good old Guth! Sir Tyrone would be so proud. And see how the Thespian blood continues to seep out?"

  "Please, less gory imagery. Now I do freelance PR around town. In fact, I just landed this hotel, which is doing a total makeover."

  "Whatever brought an artless Minnesota babe-in-the-North-Woods to Vegas?"

  Temple winced. "A traveling magician named Max."

  "A magician. Another theatrical link. Temple, you were obviously born to trod the boards."

  "What about you? Didn't you leave home at some absurdly young age to act in New York?"

  "Yes. One tends to do that sort of thing at absurdly young ages."

  "And?"

  "I did act in New York, and did a lot of other things in New York. Couldn't model, too short. So I sold perfume at Saks, and worked for an answering service and dog-walked, acting every now and again. And then, one day almost twenty years ago, I discovered Sulah."

  "Youve been publishing novels for twenty years and the family never knew?"

  "The family never wanted to know. You know them. Rooted in Midwestern conservatism. I could never stand a life of Thou Shalt Nots. Thou shalt not move more than a mile from thy birth home. Thou shalt not ever leave the first job or husband thou hast. Thou shalt not express thyself. Thou shalt not smoke."

  She made a face and stubbed out her cigarette in the tiny crystal phoenix-shaped ashtray provided.

  The Phoenix's smoking accoutrements seemed elegant even in this age of enforced social responsibility.

  "Aunt... what do I call you?"

  "Kit. Just Kit. Please. I never had any children and I'm not about to start now. Thank God you're well past the age of consent-- aren't you?" When Temple nodded, she went on. "My middle name's Katherine, and I always liked Christopher Marlowe's plays. People have been calling me Kit for thirty years."

  "But your cards home--"

  "--were signed Ursula. I know. Thou shalt not change thy given name, either. Why did Sister Sarah ever give you the progressive first name of Temple, anyway? I remember Mom and Dad were speechless about it."

  "Maybe it was her one tiny rebellion. I was her last chance, after all."

  "And look at your brothers and sister: Cindy, John, Bob and Larry. You must have been her menopause baby."

  "No, I'm sure not." Temple answered with a tinge of horror. Surely her mother had not been that old when she was born, had she? Then she realized that her mother must be almost seventy.

  "Neutral names are all the rage now," Kit said contemplatively. "Who can tell whether a stockbroker named Tyler or Morgan is a boy or a girl? Maybe that's good. Maybe it'll be easier for women to get the jobs they want. Look at the young woman named Shannon who was accidentally accepted at The Citadel, a bastion of male exclusivity, otherwise known as a bastardy. They're still kicking up over it."

  "Hmm," said Temple, who hadn't found her ambiguous name any particular advantage in the struggle for survival. The name Shannon had also reminded her of the morning's incident. "Are all romance writers as awful as that Little woman?"

  "Shannon Large, you mean? No, but the media love to accent the ridiculous in this genre.

  Unfortunately, we used to have several candidates for that crown in the early days, and a few such dinosaurs survive. Romance Queens of the genus Tyrannosaurus Regina. But most romance writers are as everyday as Hamburger Helper: hard-working women--and a few brave men--who labor in obscurity to earn five figures, all of them with no more personal pizzazz or prima donna temperament than a sponge mop. I, of course, am not one of them."

  Kit flicked an errant tobacco flake off her tongue with such panache that Temple regarded the gesture as a hallmark of breeding rather than evidence of the filthy habit that it was.

  "Are you thinking of writing romances?" her aunt asked.

  "No! But Electra might be."

  "Well, tell your friend to talk to me if she wants any advice from the published."

  "Did your previous remark mean that you earn more than five figures?"

  "Not at first."

  "But now?"

  Kit nodded and sipped her Gibson as demurely as a cat lapping up tap water. "It's not been easy.

  Most romance writers have been cruelly exploited for years--don't laugh, I'm not dramatizing, although I admit that I do have tendencies."

  "But why romances?"

  "Because they are Theatre, my dear! Action, Adventure, Passion. Nobody mounts Marlowe and Webster anymore. Poor old Shakespeare is always being updated until we have punk-rock Romeos and Juliet's, Julius Caesar is a Mafia don and The Tempest is done as a Star Trek episode, with Caliban a Klingon. Historical romances offer me sweep, swash and buckle, tragic separations and ecstatic reunions, villains grand enough to gnaw the scenery with their pointed fangs and forked tongues, language that flows as it was wont in previous centuries, and only clicks and stutters like a banal telegram in more modern works. It has imagination! Optimism! Happy endings--after much travail and torment, of course. It is just like Real Life, if you think about it."

  Around them, patrons burst into polite applause. Kit inclined her mahogany-red head and lit another cigarette. She would make a magnificent Madwoman of Chaillot, Temple thought, instantly revising her thought. Kit was a bit young for the part, yet Girau-doux's play was one of those lovely exercises in language so seldom performed anymore. No wonder her aunt wrote instead of acted.

  "Miss Barr?"

  The voice was masculine, ever sweet and low, and came from above. Had Gabriel descended?

  Temple glanced up to find a dramatically dark, long-haired man in a shirt that laced up the front looking down at her.

  Obviously a heartbreaker, but how the chromium picolinate did he know her? Kit's raised eyebrows across the table were asking the same question after reaching a similar conclusion.

  The soft-spoken deference in his voice and stance oozed unconscious, but nonetheless effective charm. She knew him from somewhere . ..

  "Cheyenne," he reminded her with a shy (or possibly sensual) smile.

  Oh, yes. Cheyenne. One of the male strippers in the Rhinestone G-strip competition. He of the intriguingly ambiguous (or was that ambidexterous?) sexual preference and ethnic origin.

  "Are you competing here?" she asked in confusion.

  He nodded. "A lot more rewarding than the last contest you saw me in. Fabio has made millions in endorsements, and this wannabe Fabrizio hopes to cash in on the same market. I figure it's time for a different type."

  Temple hated to tell him that brunettes always came in sec-ond to blonds of either sex. R
edheads were even worse off, despite the current rage for red on Hollywood actress' heads.

  Kit tipped her head and showed lazy cat-slit eyes. "Fabio was the first; he'll make the most."

  Cheyenne smiled his ever-appreciative smile. "Still plenty left for the rest of us. I've just come back from some European modeling gigs--London, Oslo, Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome. In fact--"

  His hot fudge gaze slid like brunette lava over Temple's features, one by one. But this time another, less intimate message seemed to be behind it. Something as icy as anxiety.

  "Maybe we could get together this evening for a few minutes, Miss Barr. I have a big deal brewing. It won't be announced for a couple of days, but..." he laughed disarmingly. "I might need a publicist, or at least some friendly advice. I could buy you a drink."

  Temple weighed the flattery of a tete-a-tete with one of Love's Leading Lotharios against her lust for the Midnight Louie shoes. Feet won, hands down.

  "Thanks, but I've got a previous engagement tonight. Anytime later on during the convention, though."

  Did honest disappointment fleet across that lean, sculpted face? Temple's pulses throbbed with a frisson of regret.

  "Later will have to do, then. Thanks." Cheyenne's wry smile broadened to public dimensions as his gaze flitted between them. "Both of you ladies are welcome to drop in on our pageant rehearsal in the Peacock Theater tomorrow morning. My act has a surprise built in that'll knock everybody dead. Eight o'clock."

  "That early?" Kit complained.

  "The guys want to be mingling with the conventioneers by ten a.m. That builds audience applause for the actual competition and that influences our distinguished panel of judges. Can I count on your claps, ladies?"

  "Absolutely," Kit boomed in her foggiest voice, "a standing ovation."

  With a farewell crinkle of his sloe eyes, Cheyenne retreated through the engulfing greenery as lithely as a snake one might find in Eden.

  "I think he's sweet on you," Kit said.

  "No . .. I'm ages older. I mean, most of these guys are only twenty-two or something."

  "Men reach their sexual peak at eighteen."

  "You could have fooled me. They hardly seem old enough to enter into a mature relationship until the mid-twenties."

  "Who's talking maturity?"

  "I guess I'm behind the times," Temple admitted. "What do you think of these male cover-model contests?"

  Kit coughed and gulped the last of her Gibson, then clapped a fanned hand to her throat. "Really?

  Outside of ogling opportunity? Grounds for murder. Outrageous exploitation--and not of the boyos onstage. We women write the books, read the books, yet these cover boys get all the publicity and big-dollar endorsements. When was the last time you saw a mere romance author on a TV talk show or a television commercial? Yet there is Fabio, the Studmuffin of Scent, spritzing away like Schwarzenegger posing as a madly overgrown chef with his "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" spray that wouldn't melt in his fine Italian mouth. Then there's his overblown book contract that some unsung woman is penning for low dough and no glory. Maybe women should have equal ogling opportunity with men, but the fact is that we're amateurs at it, and we get damn little out of it. Even when the tables are turned, we come out on the short end of the stick economically. That said"-- Kit leaned closer, a drift of smoky breath wafting toward Temple; she lowered her voice to true Tallulah range--"I'd take that one home for Christmas any day of the year, wouldn't you?"

  "Ummm, pass. His health pedigree strikes me as risky. Besides, I distrust these guys on principle.

  There's something smarmy about a man who makes his living off women. I believe they used to call them gigolos in your day."

  "Oooh. Nasty little snapper, aren't you, niece?"

  "I suppose," Temple added, "you are dying to go to that model contest rehearsal at the crack of dawn tomorrow."

  " Mais oui, cherie. "

  "Mom would be shocked to know that you turned out to be a dirty middle-aged woman."

  "Your mother would be shocked if I had turned out a saint, so why give her the satisfaction? This boy-toy thing is such a fabulous sideshow, anyway. What's the harm in sneaking a preview peek? Perhaps it will inspire you to enter the Love's Leading Amateur contest."

  Temple nodded sourly. "Sometimes I do indeed feel the champion of the world in that arena."

  "I can't stay out too late," Electra warned when Temple returned to their room and suggested an afternoon outing to the new MGM Grand. "My two-day writing seminar starts bright and early at ten a.m. tomorrow."

  "You'll be up even earlier if you join Aunt Kit and me in the cover-model pageant run-through.

  Cheyenne especially invited me."

  "Ooh, Cheyenne. I remember that sexy young man from the strippers' contest. He'd be terrific on Indian romance covers."

  "Kit said that romance writers resent male cover models getting all the attention, instead of the authors and books."

  "Maybe the publishers have overdone the hunk appeal, but as a reader, I'm not so much offended as bemused."

  "Cover hunks. The expression suggests narcissistic, oily characters living off women."

  "Equal opportunity, dear. Picture-perfect girls have been doing that for years with men. At least someone is bothering to court our good opinion. When you reach my age and width that counts for a lot. Now, about this outing today with your long-lost aunt--"

  "It'll be fun for Kit and us to check out the MGM Grand Wizard of Oz display and the theme park out back. And don't worry, Kit isn't like an aunt at all; you'll love her. I haven't seen her in years. I'm amazed she recognized me. Best of all, she's an author who can give you tips for your contest entry."

  "I don't recall reading anything by a Kit--"

  "Not her pen name. That's Sulah Savage."

  "No!"

  "Yes."

  "Not the author of Quicksilver Moon?"

  "Don't ask me."

  "Sulah Savage is one of my favorite authors! I'd go through the buffet line at the Bucket O' Blood to spend some time with her. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

  "I didn't know how notorious she was."

  "Well, shake a shoe, hon. I can't speak for you, but I'm ready. We're off to see the Wizard."

  Chapter 8

  Deep Waters

  Lap-swimming was the most relentlessly routine discipline in the physical fitness lexicon.

  And yet, Matt often thought while beating his way back and forth through the choppy chlorinated water, the combination of robotic motion and buoyant mental freedom produced a body/mind synergy with virtual reality overtones.

  A swimmer became his own iron lung; breathing became a measured necessity rather than a forgotten art. While every muscle fought to keep the body afloat on its liquid treadmill, the mind made unauthorized excursions to the lower depths. Sometimes, while swimming in some pristine, heavenly blue pool, Matt's imagination plummeted to a childhood level of primal fear. He would recall an ancient episode from a Flash Gordon film serial. The-evilemperor-Ming from the planet Mongo, the guy with the Snow-White stepmother upstanding collar, had Flash tossed into a huge water tank . . . with a giant octopus.

  Matt's glancing glimpses of sun-dappled water shadows below would suddenly sprout lurking tentacles where there were only pool-grooming hoses or the shadow of a palm blade. Or he would conjure the slice of a shark fin, thanks to more recent Spielberg-ian memories.

  Today Matt saw or sensed no monsters of the deep, except the thrashing confusion in his own psyche. Every stroke accentuated the I-am-a-camera viewpoint. The airy, dry world above the Circle Ritz pool became a series of rapid intercuts: sky, palm tree, building edge, ruffle of agitated surface water, deeper water sliced by his body like a gelatinous aquamarine by a gemologist's diamond-edged blade.

  Back and forth, his every motion was both ultimate effort and easy birdlike glide through an alien element. Sun. Sky. Spray. Kicking, carving. Thinking without thinking about it. Meeting monsters of the id and
ego in the vasty depths. Glimpsing Leviathan in a teacup, Neptune in the iris of a chlorinated eye.

  Matt touched warm concrete, pushed away, turned, then churned back the length of the modest pool in eight easy strokes of utter effort.

  Sky. Sun. Shadow.

  Plough the water into forever-vanishing furrows.

  Sun. Sky. Shadow.

  Shadow?

  Matt reversed himself like a motor, instantly upright, treading water, his face and breath caught between warring elements. His eyelashes strained a liquid veil from his waterlogged vision.

  The new silhouette of a bush beside the pool turned into a squatting man, knees jackknifed, elbows akimbo. Primitive man adapted such postures easily; over civilized man didn't have the joints or the humility for it.

  Matt squinted into the corona of sunlight surrounding the figure. The black-by-contrast center resolved into lurid focus: Max Kinsella's protective coloring, a Hawaiian shirt.

  Matt's squint became a frown. He felt like a grunt surprised by a Viet Cong during R&R.

  "Something I can do for you?" he asked, implying that was the last thing he was inclined to do.

  "Talk."

  Matt grabbed the pool's thick curved lip, sank, gained buoyancy and pushed himself out of the water. He dripped like sunken treasure for a few silent moments.

  Kinsella never moved, despite the puddle of water inching toward his tennis-shoed feet. No wonder Matt hadn't heard his approach.

  Matt sat dripping on the pool's edge, unhappy and not too worried about showing it. He hated having to leave the protective overcoat of the water, the self-immersion in amniotic fluid, the cover for his almost-nakedness.

  That's what he relished about the Circle Ritz. Almost none of its tenants used the pristine but out-of-date pool. No witnesses to his moment of leaving the water, a time when flashes of vulnerability would wring him like cramps. In high school he had avoided gym, using whatever subterfuge he could; he had avoided eyes and questions. Now, he no longer had body bruises to hide, but the habit had transferred to a shame of his body. No matter how much he understood that none of the old pain showed, or how much he was beginning to believe that his body might be a source of pleasure and admiration, he still hated revealing himself. Perhaps his pride feared pity, but no one could see the long-invisible wounds. Perhaps his fear dreaded pride.