Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  But in the kitchen at rush hour, omelets and pancakes are sizzling off the stovetops faster than hundred-dollar bills off the wad of a Texas poker player. All the white-coated figures are flying around looking up, not down.

  "A hair!" Chef Song suddenly solos like a demented Barber of Seville, bending over the yellow fluff of an omelet. "Short and black. A moustache hair. Who has not shave?"

  I has not shave ... and I has not stayed long enough for the lone hair to come home to me. I am through the swinging door into the back service halls that connect with every hotel ballroom and restaurant. Via the same hip variety of door, I am into the Lalique Ballroom and under a floor-length tablecloth before you can spell Esiuol Tghindim frontward.

  Only my nose and eyes peek through a tea rose-pink linen tent. I view the expected horrors: the blackened spaghetti of thick electrical cables; the restless, high-heeled feet of Miss Savannah Ash-leigh; the pungent sneaker-clad tootsies of the camera crew; the Italian loafers of the director; the wingtips of the watching catfood muckety-mucks; and the pink canvas carrier of the Divine Yvette.

  I see no sign of transport for the loathsome Maurice, but I know he is lurking somewhere.

  Meanwhile, I shimmy from tablecloth tent to tablecloth tent until I am within whisker-distance of Miss Savannah Ashleigh's ankles. These are not the dainty appendages of my own little doll. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is no tenderfoot. Her ankles are tanned to within an inch of their epidermis, but the varicose tracks of blue veins deface the landscape nevertheless. I know Miss Temple would want a full description of Miss Savannah Ashleigh's footwear, were she here, so I overcome my distaste to examine the area further. There is no doubt that Miss Savannah Ashleigh has a taste for flashy shoes. The current pair are oil-slick patent leather that zip up the back of the heel and the so-called throat of the vamp.

  Given that her spike heels tower at least an inch higher than Miss Temple's most elevated pair, the bony, blue-veined Ashleigh feet look forced into the shoes. Her insteps bulge like Cinderella's stepsisters' feet. All in all, a most unappetizing sight, normally unworthy of comment, did I not have a moral obligation to consider my roommate's interests before I focus on my own.

  Speaking of which, Miss Savannah Ashleigh does. Speak, that is. Of the Divine Yvette.

  "What are you doing with that stick?" she demands in a voice both low and breathy.

  Mr. Italian Loafers spins on the soft carpeting. "It is a toy to encourage your cat to perform for the camera."

  "Yvette does not play with such cheap diversions. They do not interest her."

  I see a turquoise ostrich plume spin near the carpeting. I agree that the color is cheap and obnoxious, and that I would much prefer the natural feather, attached, in fact, to its natural ostrich. Size is not a factor for Midnight Louie. However, it is all I can do to restrain myself from dashing out of cover and clawing that feather flat.

  Apparently I am not alone. A silver shape vaults out of nowhere to clutch for the feather. The Divine Yvette, despite pedigree and petite size, is quite a stalker. In fact, she is adorable when she is mad. I watch her fierce face bare tiny fangs as her dainty velvet mitts swat the feather-on-a-stick to smithereens. Well, perhaps feathers cannot smash into smithereens, but turquoise curls fly like emigrees from a Ginger Rogers ballgown.

  It is all I can do not to sneeze, which would be disastrous.

  "Tacky, tacky," frets Miss Savannah Ashleigh.

  I am surprised that she is not looking at her feet instead of the Divine Yvette. She rises and moves nearer the camera.

  "And what are those... grass clippings on the rug?" she wants to know next.

  Mr. Italian Loafers shuffles. "Ah, something to make kitty happy. Catnip."

  "Catnip? You are supplying my Yvette with a mind-altering substance? Get rid of it at once! She has never had anything herbal other than a bit of organically grown rye grass now and then, and my Boston ferns."

  "It is just a little nip, Miss Ashleigh." The loafers do a soft shoe of irritation on Miss Van von Rhine's finest broadloom. "It relaxes them. I have done dozens of animal commercials--"

  "That is obviously your problem," Miss Savannah Ashleigh interrupts. "Yvette is not an animal."

  "Animal companion commercials," he revises through gritted teeth, trying for a more politically correct term.

  Politically correct oils no hinges with Miss Savannah Ashleigh. "She is not an animal!"

  "Cat?"

  "Hmmph." Miss Savannah Ashleigh swivels on the ball of her high heels to turn her back on the Italian loafers and the unenlightened person in them.

  "She is not a cat? The manufacturer will be pretty upset to hear that."

  Miss Savannah Ashleigh bows low without bending her knees, a maneuver that keeps her posterior high in the air like a lady cat's in heat, which presents the director with much more to think about than the precise nature of the Divine Yvette.

  The Divine One snarls prettily as her mistress wrests her from the feather into her arms and next to her face. She straightens-- the mistress, not the questionable Yvette.

  "Mommy's little sweetums is not a nasty old animal! She is a little fairy princess yummy-nummums with an ancient, wise soul. She does not chase foolish toys or need hallucinatory substances to perform.

  She is a natural star, like Mommums."

  If that is truly the case, the Divine Yvette, the Italian Loafers and the catglop commercial are in trouble-wubble.

  The director suddenly decides to direct. He plucks Mommy's yummy-nummums (I do have to agree with Miss Savannah Ashleigh's besotted estimation, for vastly different reasons) from the vicinity of Mommy's facey-wacey.

  "Sit down, Miss Ashleigh," he says. "It will be over much more quickly if you let us do our jobs."

  Moving to a set surrounded by a convocation of tripods and cameras, he plunks the Divine Yvette down on a Plexiglas balustrade. A crystal chandelier has been lowered from the high ceiling to twinkle and flash above the Divine Yvette's perch like a diamond waterfall. Nearby sits a long banquet table covered in the tea rose-pink damask that matches the pale pink pads of the Divine One's silver-velvet feet and the center of her tiny triangular nose set like a rosy pearl in a thin bezel of black enamel. She looks adorable, and she is still mad, thanks to sequential bouts of feather-sniffing, catnip-licking and Mommy-mauling.

  "Where is the other cat?" The director turns to the crew while Miss Savannah Ashleigh settles back in the pink canvas director's chair that matches the Divine Yvette's carrier and apparently accompanies her everywhere as well.

  "Yvette does not need a costar," Miss Savannah Ashleigh sniffs in a soft, injured tone.

  Did she not need the dough from this venture, one can be sure that Miss Savannah Ashleigh would not be here. In fact, she gasps as a woman on the staff darts toward the Divine Yvette and backs away to reveal a pink-ice cubic zirconium collar circling my beloved's delicate neck.

  Miss Savannah Ashleigh sits up indignantly. "I hope that I... that she will be able to keep that after the shoot."

  The director rolls his eyes and curls his toes in butter-soft, and colored, Italian leather. "I am certain that can be arranged, Miss Ashleigh."

  It is obvious to both him and me that the trinket will be adorning the Ashleigh wrist rather than the Divine Yvette throat from now on.

  My poor lady love! Forced to labor under the influence wearing confining gems destined for her greedy mistress. There should be laws against this sort of thing. And the alien, intrusive male has not even made an appearance yet. This entire scene begins to smack of a forced mating, with my captured darling decked out for the harem.

  "All right." At the director's nod, the same woman who had collared my lady love waves the feathered lash before the Divine One's pink pearl of a nose.

  The Divine Yvette's blue-green eyes widen to perfect, baby-doll circles as her platinum whiskers tremble. She leaps along the balustrade, balancing like a Chinese acrobat, as airborne as a prima ballerina performing Swan Lake. (S
peaking of Swan Lake, I wonder if that is an upscale version of Duck Pond. I have enjoyed games of cat-and-mouse in such vicinities.) Despite the weight of the alien collar, the Divine One floats like a butterfly ... and stings like Ali, fiercely boxing tiny turquoise curls from the plume that catch in her silver neck ruff like falling stars. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is right about one thing: the Divine Yvette is a born performer. A catfood manufacturer could sell worm-steak with this pussums!

  In a few airy hops, she has lofted atop the pink damask table-cloth, the camera dollying in the feathery wake of her pendulum tail. Now her sensitive nose detects the point of the exercise. A fresh dollop of A La Cat fills a footed, cut-crystal dessert dish at a place setting fit for the Queen, or at least her first cousin.

  Yet while the camera captures the Divine Yvette's cavorting, I notice sinister background preparations. A mullioned window stands alone, propped up by wooden supports. A black curtain behind it signifies deepest night, and also black intentions, for I see a familiar mug poking out of a familiar carrying case.

  It is yellow, as are the two slitted-pupil eyes in that notorious face. Maurice, the Yummy Tum-tum-tummy cat, is about to make his entrance.

  I watch as he is pulled from the carrier and his big, splayed mitts are posed on the supposed windowsill. With a little prodding from behind and another plumed stick waving like a turquoise carrot before him, he leaps atop the narrow sill and teeters for a moment.

  I turn to see the Divine Yvette in closeup, sampling the proffered catfood in innocent cooperation.

  Little does she know she is about to be accosted by a gate-crashing camera hog.

  A gentle push from behind encourages Maurice to take his mighty leap to join the Divine Yvette on the tabletop. I launch myself from beneath that very table like twenty pounds of avenging hellhound.

  We meet in midair, claws out, tails curled, camera rolling. Maurice's surprised yowl is drowned out by my superb battle cry. After batting him down like a butterfly, I turn (with my best side to the camera) and jump up to join the Divine Yvette atop the table.

  "Louie!" she greets me, pausing to lick her whiskers feline-clean.

  We sniff noses to insure that a body double has not been slipped in somewhere. She is not unduly upset, but the vanquished Maurice and the director are livid, I notice.

  "Ahhhh!" Miss Savannah Ashleigh has risen to the occasion, but is shocked motionless. She clutches her purse to her breast like a baby, and wails.

  Maurice growls fiercely from the floor and tries to jump up. I do not even have to biff him again. The Divine Yvette watches with contempt, then bats at him when his whiskers are within striking distance.

  The blow is anemic, but enough to startle Maurice out of his stripes. He lands like a sack of soggy potatoes, and stays there. The Divine Yvette sure is cute when she is mad, which I tell her.

  "I am not mad, Louie," she says with a dainty shrug. "I am eating.

  At that, she resumes to consume, as is her duty. What a pro!

  I sniff the edge of her bowl, then back off. I have just gotten a good whiff of the muck she is eating.

  What a pro!

  By then the director, the collar lady, the cameramen and Miss Savannah Ashleigh are all converging on me with contorted faces and unintelligible growls, howls and yowls.

  I leap for my life, spinning a gold-rimmed plate to the floor along with some silverware that feels as heavy as a Buccalatti service for twelve. The crash and clang of the falling place setting muffles the humans' naughty words, so my darling does not have to hear them.

  The last I see of the Divine Yvette is her piquant little kisser buried to the nostrils in A La Cat.

  The last I see of Maurice the rum-turn tiger, Yummy Tum-tum-tummy cat is his yellow-striped hindquarters being stuffed unceremoniously into a portable plastic cubicle like so much dog-meat. Too bad it is not a Dumpster.

  Chapter 24

  Jake of All Trades

  "Cheyenne's dressing room? Sure thing." He jerked his head in a forward direction to indicate Temple was to follow him.

  With thirty-three guys making five costume changes en masse somewhere in the Crystal Phoenix basement, Temple felt more secure asking a passing stranger for guidance than blundering around on her own.

  Her guide was amiable, and also tall, but more lanky than hunky. In fact, he reminded her of Tiny Tim's cuter younger brother, which wasn't saying much for his looks.

  But Temple followed his long legs as fast as she could without her high heels clicketying like a typewriter on the harsh concrete floors. She soon discovered that the pageant contestants had been given a vast, empty storage space as a dressing room. Long rows of imported folding chairs and tables topped with plug-in makeup mirrors had been curtained into two-person cubicles. Still, with thirty-plus contestants, any real privacy was--as always in theatrical ventures--a snare and a delusion.

  Now that she had seen the dressing rooms, killing Cheyenne in the dark confusion of the spacious stage wings made much more sense than trying to do the deed discreetly in one of these cramped, confessional-sized, cloth-walled booths.

  Temple's anonymous guide stopped by the burgundy entrance curtain to one cubicle and swaged it back, bowing with a sweeping gesture for her to enter.

  She saw nothing inside she didn't expect to see . . . and smell. Theatrical makeup never hid behind floral additives; it broadcast a strong, oily-waxy odor. Temple eyed open tins of bronze body makeup, a much-fingered clear plastic bottle of some kind of oil, and an upstanding chorus line of mousses and other modern hair shapers and bodifiers necessary for long tresses, no matter the sex. That was one of the two adjacent tables. The other table top suffered from a neatness verging on abandonment, except for a blue folder, a box of tissue and a lone tin containing a pallid golden sun of makeup.

  "Mine," the man said, noticing her surprise at the lack of cosmetics.

  Temple turned, even more surprised. "You're a contestant?"

  "Over forty." The man slumped onto his metal folding chair to gaze into a tilted makeup mirror rimmed with unlit theatrical bulbs, like the matching unit on Cheyenne's cluttered tabletop. The overhead fluorescent cast a sunken, sallow visage into the mirror. He made a deprecatory face. "More over forty than most. Jake Gotshall. And you are--?"

  "Temple Barr. I work for the Crystal Phoenix."

  "I guess I'm what you would call a wild card contestant." Jake smiled at his ghastly reflection.

  He reminded Temple of Gumby, another elastic, vague figure dating from a few decades ago. Call it aging hippie. Jake's hair was long, but thin, lackluster and graying. From an ebbing hairline it dwindled into a limp ponytail that thinned into split ends before reaching his shoulder blades. His features were Gumby-soft too: no overshot ledge of jaw and chin to cast a shadow on massive pectorals; no lush eyebrows shading deep-set eyes. After a few days of seeing Incredible Hunks, Temple was amazed to realize that Jake looked completely masculine while claiming not a single characteristic that could be termed "hunkish."

  He smiled at her expression.

  "No doubt you're wondering why I called you all together here. Actually"--he looked carefully around Temple for signs of other people--"you're alone." His voice assumed an Alan Alda self-mockery. "No doubt you're wondering why I called you here alone?" His straggling eyebrows quirked upward in patented ogling villain style.

  "I wanted to come here," Temple pointed out. "I took you for a stagehand."

  "Oh, cruel fate! Does this indicate that my chances for this year's Incredible Hunk are not hunky-dory? Don't I look like the late hunk's dressing-room mate?"

  Temple sat, gingerly, on Cheyenne's empty folding chair. "Apparently you are, whether you're sure about it or not. I knew Cheyenne, very casually. I wondered what had happened before he went on stage. Maybe you can tell me."

  Jake leaned his elbows on the makeup table, hands cupping his amiable, if not particularly attractive face. "You're being too polite. You know you're dying to ask what I'm doing i
n an Incredible Hunk contest. Instead of inquiring about my late mirror-mate, you should wonder how I got past the contest doormen, in this case doorwomen."

  "Enlighten me."

  He grinned and leaned closer, revealing rather gray and crooked teeth. "I know a terrific photographer. Besides, I do some stand-up comedy, and figured this gig would give me an unlikely new shtick. Here's my photo." He slipped an eight-by-ten from the blue folder and spun it toward Temple.

  "You do have a helluva photographer." Lots of shadow and tricky highlighting had given Jake an intense, aging Hamlet look. Too bad the man in person completely contradicted the image. He more resembled an aging ham-actor, period. From the stamp on the back, the photo wizard was a woman.

  Temple would have to look her up if she ever needed a really flattering portrait. "Is that all it took to enter? A good photograph?"

  He nodded. "And some bio sheets, with vital statistics." When Jake flexed his arm, as he did now, his plaid shirtsleeve remained loose and unimpressive. "Of course I lied a lot." He peeked, like Tiny Tim, from behind a strand of graying hair that had escaped the rubber band at his nape.

  Temple started laughing. "You're a shill. A walking lampoon! What did the pageant organizers do when they actually saw you?"

  "Screamed bloody murder until they realized that ejecting a pre-accepted candidate would be bad press. So they made the best of it. I'd showed up, hadn't I? Paid my money and they took a chance.

  Besides, I'm warm and breathing, and they were really short of entrants in the over-forty category this year. I, as you can see, am tall, and about as over forty as you can get."

  "Forty-nine?" Temple guessed.