Cat in an Aqua Storm

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Yeah, but I’ve held on this long. Thirty-five-years-old last April. You’d think I would have learned something by now.”

  “You have. You’ve got an economic way out now. All you have to do is take it.”

  “They hang on, though, just like the last one. They treat you like scum, call you a slut, but the minute you try to leave, you’re suddenly too good to let go of.”

  “He’s sick. He needs you to be sick, too.”

  “But I’m not gonna let him drag me down, not anymore. Damn man. He’s not nice like you. He doesn’t listen, just... slam, bang, pow.”

  “I’m paid to listen.”

  “That’s not why you do it, though, is it? That’s all right, don’t answer. We’re supposed to be talkin’ about me, not you. Me and my ‘problem.’ It’d be nice to meet you, though, someday when I’m outa here, Brother John. Maybe I’ll call you up and we can have lunch and talk about the bad old days.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Probably rules against it. Maybe it’s better. I’ve told you things that make me ashamed.”

  “You don’t have to feel ashamed for what someone else does.”

  “No, and it’s him, isn’t it? Always him. Always mean, always running me down. They always seem like Prince Charming at first, and then, Godzilla. Maybe Godzilla’s too nice. He’s been real quiet lately. He hates what I’m doing Saturday. He wants to stop me. I can see it building up. He’s yelling about the country going to hell and no chance for white men and women are nothing but whores—why does he hate so much?”

  “He’s afraid some of what he hates might be inside him.”

  “Him? Afraid? Excuse me for laughing. But yeah, maybe laughing will help. He’s pathetic, really, big son of a gun with nothing better to do than beat up on some little woman. He’s scum. Guess you can’t comment on that. I’m not going to be afraid of him anymore. I won’t!”

  “The best thing would be to leave now. Tonight.”

  “Oh, not tonight. Not tomorrow night, or tomorrow night, or tomorrow night. But a couple nights after that, yeah. Whether I win or not. Yeah, I’m gone. Thanks. I feel less... nervous now. If I didn’t have you to call, and be silly and scared to, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “I’m here to help.”

  “You do, you do. You help me not be afraid all the time.”

  10

  Vamp of Savannah

  First thing Tuesday morning, the aqua Storm idled silently at the driveway leading to the Goliath Hotel, the engine struck with what Temple imagined was automotive awe.

  Against the bright blue sky loomed the silhouette of a man straddling the road and sidewalk—a giant three stories tall. Between his braced legs must pass pedestrian and passenger alike. Temple gazed through the deep-tinted windshield at gargantuan thighs vanishing into the shadow of what charitably could be called a kilt, though it more resembled a sumo wrestler’s diaper.

  Lines about “that colossal wreck,” Shelley’s fallen statue of Ozymandias in the poem of the same title, filled her head. The actual inspiration for this overblown anthropomorphic archway was the Colossus of Rhodes, a lost wonder of the ancient world. Beyond the huge figure sprawled the garish bulk of the Goliath Hotel, a Theme Park from Hyperbole dedicated to the purging of any iota of good taste impertinent enough to rear its modest head within view of the Goliath’s blissfully gauche patrons.

  Temple tapped the Storm’s gas pedal. The sleek little car whisked under the colossus and up the sweeping drive (hotel drives in Las Vegas are compelled by law to sweep). It stopped under an entry canopy lined with yawning ribs of mirrored copper that reminded Temple of the whale in Pinocchio about to devour the unwary. This was as apt an image for the entryway to a Las Vegas hotel-casino as any.

  Eight a.m. sharp, read her Big Ben-size watch face.

  “I’ll be getting a ramp pass from hotel PR,” she told the uniformed valet who leaped to open the Storm’s door.

  “Uniformed” was overdoing it. Valets at the Goliath wore gilt sandals, white linen Egyptian-style pleated kilts and short blond Bo Derek-dreadlock wigs. Tens, unfortunately, they were not.

  Temple pushed the seat all the way back to wrestle her overloaded tote bag out of the car, then waited to see how the valet would maneuver that getup into the diminutive Storm. His efforts showed almost as much hairy leg as the colossus, but Temple was more interested in making sure his brass wristbands didn’t scratch the dashboard. She still had forty-three months left to pay on the car.

  Although the Goliath Hotel was one of Las Vegas’s many landmarks, she hadn’t visited it since Max had performed here. She strode briskly through the glittering carousel of copper-framed revolving doors. Their glass panels showed outsiders a mirrored face, but gave insiders a see-through view. The click of her heels on the marble floor sounded reassuringly confident, as it always did.

  Unlike most hotels, Las Vegas hostelries feature discreetly hidden registration desks. What welcomes guests is not the bellman, but ringing ranks of slot machines and the chime of quarters washing down durable but greedy stainless-steel throats.

  Temple blinked and took off her dark glasses while her eyes adjusted to the deliberately dim interior. Gambling Meccas cultivate an eternal three a.m. atmosphere, the better to lure visiting Goldilocks into trying to find the “just right” slot or craps table. “If you don’t succeed, try, try again” was truly the house motto.

  She crossed the carpet—burgundy imprinted with camel-colored... er, camels—aware of massive chandeliers glimmering above her, of slot machines spitting out a silver lava of coins here and there for lucky players.

  The dim and smoky cocktail area lay beyond the first circle of slot machines. Veiled waitresses shimmied among low divans and gilt camel-saddle cocktail tables. Beyond them tiny, gleaming fairy lights trimmed the bare trees that bordered the Goliath’s most infamous feature.

  Temple paused beside it—a twenty-foot-wide waterway meandering through a cocktail lounge. At a velvet-roped landing, visitors could embark on an automated ride in miniature red-velvet-lined gondolas. For a few titillating seconds, the gondola route wound through an artificial cave with glow-in-the-dark stars dimpling a Styrofoam-rock ceiling. The attraction was called “The Love Moat.”

  “Corny,” Temple pronounced under her breath with wistful disdain. Max had thought so, too. It hadn’t stopped either of them from embarking on a glide into the manufactured dark and a stolen kiss under cover of same.

  She sighed and moved on, past a flight of plush-carpeted stairs kept off limits for now by showy red-velvet ropes—the entrance to the Sultan’s Palace Theater, where Max had performed. Finally she turned down a nondescript hallway, slipping with relief into the hotel’s functional areas. Her goal was the offices of Brad Mitchellson, head PR honcho.

  The outer office sported the usual chaos: piles of printed matter occupied every flat surface, including vast portions of the floor and all chair seats.

  “You here to see Brad?” the receptionist asked crisply. The only tip-off that this was Las Vegas were her false eyelashes and dagger-length faux fingernails.

  Temple’s nod resulted in a quick buzz. Mitchellson soon burst through the ajar inner-office door like a warm puppy.

  “Temple! Come in. Glad to have you working on this. Great of you to substitute on such short notice. We’re in a mess,” he finished, leading her into his only slightly less well-papered office. He whisked a stack of brochures from a chair seat so she could sit.

  “By ‘mess’ do you mean the usual”—she gestured at the surroundings as she gratefully slung her tote bag to the floor—“or the killing?”

  “Oh, God.” He sat.

  Like most PR types, his personality was genial and attractive, but today his tie looked like it had never been decently knotted and his short brown razor-cut showed the rumpling of harried fingers. He gestured at the green squiggles on his personal-computer screen.

  “Trying to outline a new strategy: Life Aft
er Death, so to speak. Here’s the week’s schedule.”

  Temple took it, glad to have hard data in hand. “So Monday’s killing occurred well before the weekend competition?”

  “Monday was the first day we had acts scheduled to come in, to start rehearsing and cueing the tech staff. We were starting to line up media exposure, too, ahead of time. Only we got more than we wanted.”

  “But the choreographed PR isn’t needed until the weekend—Friday through Sunday?”

  “Right. And we attracted a lot of early interest before Crawford Buchanan even got the job.”

  “I can imagine,” Temple murmured, paging through eight-by-ten black-and-whites—a stunning array of the bare and the beautiful of both sexes. “Quite a variety of acts here.”

  “This began as a female-only stripper’s get-together and contest, but times have changed. Now we have a modest men’s competition and some novelty categories, including Loving Couples, a thing named Over-Sexty, as we call it, even Bods of a Feather, to cover animal acts.”

  Temple studied a photograph of an excessively long snake enhancing the anatomically impossible position of a female stripper. “Does the SPCA sanction that?”

  Brad smiled as she flashed the photo, looking relaxed for the first time. “No problem. Our only protesters are the usual Holy Rollers and feminists. We welcome them. You know how calling something sin gets the press out in droves.”

  “Indeedy. God's gift to the struggling PR person. What about the murder, Brad?”

  He shrugged beige-shirted shoulders. “You know the routine better than I do, after the ABA thing. Cops underfoot. Mucho interviewing. The strippers are shocked, of course, and they were all nervous to begin with. Winning a Rhinestone G-string means something in this business. Some contestants have rehearsed for months. These people put everything they have into coming up with a mind-boggling act.”

  “So I see,” Temple commented, “but I didn’t think it was minds strippers were out to boggle.”

  “You still have problems with the ambience?”

  “Call it a middle-class hang-up. What's the difference between a bare-breasted show girl wearing a G-string and most of an ostrich—and a stripper? Why do I feel that the subtle sexual tease of a nightclub show is classier than the frank titillation of a strip joint?” Temple's hands hit the top of his desk in concert. “I’m going to use this assignment to find out. I'll interview the competitors, work up some angles on how normal they are, where they come from—geographically and mentally.”

  Brad eyed her cautiously from under an appealingly dislodged lock of brown hair. “You going to ask about the murder?”

  Temple shook her head. “Only if they want to bring it up. It’s none of my business. We’re all better off putting this behind us.”

  “I hope you can convince the local media of that.” Brad swooped a fan of papers into one pile. “The murder made the wire services, too. Here are the releases I’d hammered out before the competition people hit town. Buchanan didn’t have a chance to put anything in writing. How’s his heart, by the way?”

  “Hard as ever,” Temple muttered before giving her public statement on that topic. “He seems to be recovering well,” she told Brad.

  Mitchellson chuckled as he showed her out. “Probably better than you will be by next Sunday. It should be an interesting week. Ask for Lindy when you get to the ballroom area. It’s off the Sultan’s Palace.”

  “I know.” Temple stuck the fat sheaf of papers in her ever-present tote bag and headed down the hall. Did she ever.

  Lindy. Sounded breezy, minty, girl-next-doorsy.

  “Hi,” said the person answering to that name once Temple was inside the ballroom. “I’m coordinator for WHOOPE, a strippers association.”

  “WHOOPE? How did you come up with that acronym?”

  Lindy made a wry face. “The same way we have to do our jobs. We really had to bust our butts, and bump and grind it out. WHOOPE stands for—are you ready?—We Have an Organization Of Professional Ecdysiasts.”

  “It should really be WHAOOPE,” Temple had to point out, “but who’s going to argue?”

  “Right. And the WHOOPEs are all glad you’re doing this after all. We liked your Guthrie Theater background. It lends class to our annual endeavor. This”—she gestured at the roomful of leotard-clad women playing with exotic bits of costuming, props and their own spinal alignment—“is theater.”

  Lindy shot sleek, airheaded stripper stereotypes from hell to Sheboygan. Her cigarette-roughened voice emitted from a buxom brunette frame clad in an oversized Virginia Slims sweatshirt and black stirrup leggings that disappeared into dirty white jogging shoes of no particularly chic manufacture... in a word, Ked tennies. She gestured with strong, corded hands that ended in unvarnished fingernails clipped to sickle-moon tips.

  Temple eyed the assemblage, and the scurrying, blue-jeaned tech men brushing unconcernedly past straining flank and fanny.

  “Theater,” she repeated obediently. That was how Max had always described magic shows. Just theater.

  “Would you like to meet one of our celebrity judges?”

  “Doesn’t the competition begin Saturday night?”

  “Yeah, but this judge hit town early. She’s making a movie about a stripper, and the film crew is getting canned background shots while she soaks up ‘atmosphere.’ ” Temple gingerly threaded her way over the thick cables veining the floor. At least they obscured the vomitous pattern of the carpeting.

  Metal folding chairs sat at odd angles all around the room. Some were faced together so long-stemmed dancers could put up their warmer-wrapped legs. Only one chair was a zebra-pattern upholstered bastard Egyptian number dragged in from the lobby.

  On the clashing zigzags of black and beige posed a woman with air-whipped, ash blond hair and a pert little Barbie face on a long, slender neck. Temple rapidly took in her outfit: an off-the-shoulder cowl-collared pink angora top and white leather miniskirt that lived up to its name more than any patch of hide she had ever seen. Then, omigod, pink pearlized patent leather ankle boots with four-inch heels that could only have come from a fifties-vintage Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog!

  “Savannah Ashleigh, of course,” Lindy’s Bogart growl announced behind Temple. “This is our new PR person, Temple Barr.”

  Savannah Ashleigh was a woman after Temple’s heart. Her first glance went to the feet. Temple’s high-summer white sandals with the three-inch magenta patent heels and the electric blue, magenta and emerald pompon on the toe caused not a ripple of envy on that gorgeously static face.

  “Hello,” said Savannah Ashleigh. She spoke in an absolute monotone. It was not easy to convey such lethargic diction in two syllables. “I don’t want too much publicity early in the week, better to save it for the competition finale. I have the most divine wardrobe, and my hairdresser doesn’t arrive until Thursday. He was most tiresome about doing some visiting royalty.”

  “Perhaps I could ask you a few questions now to save time later?”

  Savannah’s shrug drew the eye to firm, smooth shoulders dusted with pearlescent powder.

  Temple dragged a metal folding chair over a small clot of cables and plunked it down just far enough from the actress so she wouldn’t be asphyxiated by fumes from her least-favorite scent, Emeraude.

  “What kind of atmosphere are you hoping to gather for your new film?” Temple began gamely, notepad in lap and no. 2 pencil poised in hand.

  Savannah Ashleigh rolled the fingers of her right hand as if balancing an invisible ball upon them. “Um, mood stuff, you know what I mean?”

  “You’re... ah, a... method actress, Miss Ashleigh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sure sounds like it,” Temple added.

  “And right now my mood is not good.” She paused after this pronouncement, as if expecting somebody to offer to make up for it. Alas, everybody in the room was busy about his or her business. Temple was Savannah’s only audience. Her heavy lashes, invisibly
implemented, lowered in frustration. “I’m not getting it. The Vibrations. The Ambience. The Core Experience.”

  “What kind of movie are you doing involving strippers?”

  “Film,” Savannah corrected with more articulation and energy than she’d shown thus far, so much that the word came out, “fil-mah.”

  “And my subject is an exotic dancer, not a stripper,” she went on. Her hands, the only animated portion of her anatomy at the moment, planted themselves delicately on her bare collarbones. “A wonderful script. So... moving. I am trying to find the spiritual center of... of all this.”

  Temple took another look at the pre-rehearsal chaos and just nodded. “What makes a girl become a stripper?” she asked.

  Savannah Ashleigh leaned closer without altering the taut blandness of her expression. Emeraude emitted a powdery, choking scarf of scent that tightened around Temple’s throat.

  “Some,” the actress said in a stage whisper, “are failed dancers. Some are failed women. Most do not look well naked unless they are moving. I, of course, am portraying an exceptional exotic dancer.”

  “Oh?” Temple searched the computer in her head for the right references. “Mata Hari? Sally Rand? Blaze Starr? Tempest Storm? Come to think of it, I’ve got a car called that.”

  “I can’t say,” Savannah said. “The script is secret. Really, I can’t talk.” Temple was tempted to agree. “I’m so upset after yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? You mean—”

  “Oh, that awful incident.”

  “The... murder?”

  “Yes, we are most upset by it.”

  “We?”

  “My Darling and I. My Darling was in the dressing room when it happened.”

  “Your... darling was a witness? What did he see?”

  “She,” Savannah Ashleigh corrected with as much sternness as a face that resembled a Franklin Mint porcelain of a Southern belle could muster.

  “She.” Temple considered and found no comeback to that one.

  Savannah Ashleigh bent, again from the waist, as if that were the only joint in her lithe but lifeless body, and lifted a rectangular, pale pink canvas bag from the floor beside her chair as Exhibit A.