"Too bad you're fussy about wearing anything off camera, Louie. That flamingo fedora you wore in the Las Vegas ad footage was tres chic, but would be sadly out of season here and now. And I guess you'd snarl at a red bow tie on a collar."
Louie, who had leaped atop Kendall's desk to bat the red fringe that draped from Temple's bodice, withheld comment. But not his claws.
"I hope you used your conference-room box recently," Temple admonished her bored darling, wishing she'd had the foresight herself to manage a rest-room visit earlier.
In minutes she had extracted her small purse from the bottom of Louie's carrier, a great place to carry valuables like credit cards, and slung it over one shoulder. She picked up Louie, sans carrier, and managed to open the office door. First, she peeked into the hall.
The Tiny Tot Parade had assembled elsewhere by now, but the Children's Chorus came loud and muffled from deeper within the suite of offices.
As if following a latter-day Pled Piper's audible trail, Temple found It passing the darkened conference room. Something moved within. Someone. Someone wearing red. The motion stopped the moment it attracted her sideways glance.
Louie chose that instant to decide that he was no longer a carry-cat.
Four dangling legs flailed. Temple, fearing snags in her expensive new velvet dress, held his weight away from her. She had an invisible opponent. Gravity grabbed Louie's leaden mid-section and pulled until it pooled like mercury in his tail-section. Louie ended up falling/jumping to the floor.
Being a cat and instinctively recognizing the least convenient place for him to go at any given moment, he immediately darted though the ajar door into the darkened conference room.
"Lou-ie!"
Temple felt like the harried mother of a delinquent tot. She dove into the dark after him, her hand slapping the wall inside for light switches.
Her palm found only smooth flannel paneling. Such oversized rooms as this usually featured multi-switch installations, not near the door like a normal switch plate, but someplace discreet and unexpected . . . and far away. Still, Temple thought, one guiding light switch must be near.
She fumbled in the dark, wondering whom she had seen lurking in here. "Lurking" was the only word to describe the darting, shy almost-motion that she had glimpsed. Now, the vast dark room was silent except for her own clumsy thumps and shuffles. Louie, naturally, could navigate this dim expanse as quietly as a snowfall.
Temple's fingers finally found a single light switch four feet from the door, and flipped up the lever. One wan light winked on, revealing Louie in Halloween-cat pose, back arched, on the conference table, facing off with . . . Santa Claus.
Then Temple remembered. Brent Colby, Jr., always played Santa at these company Christmas parties. He had to change and hide out somewhere until he made his entrance. Thanks to Louie, she had stumbled into his dressing room. Great move.
Louie clearly nonplussed Santa, and he seemed equally startled to see Temple. He had backed away from the open door's sight line. His mouth remained frozen into a round, jolly little O, as if he wanted to speak to her but had thought better of it.
She wondered if, like the tin woodman, he needed a little oil at the jaw joints. Then she noticed a costly crystal lowball glass beside him on the table.
Performance anxiety. And she wasn't helping by barging into his pre-appearance retreat.
She hotfooted over to collect Louie. By then Santa had found a traditional twinkle for his eye and had raised a forefinger to his lips.
Temple nodded, happy to comply with the holiday deception she had almost messed up. Santa glanced down to her shoes, frowned, and then winked.
Temple tucked Louie under her arm, despite velvet-raking possibilities. Cost of doing business.
"No claws!" She hissed the command to him under her breath. She shrugged apologetically at Santa Claus and hefted Louie higher. "You know the kind of claws I mean," she told the man in red.
Then she rushed out without a backward look.
Down the hall thirty feet she stopped beside an identical door, also ajar. This door leaked light and noise like a festive sieve. Entering, Temple found herself the last guest to arrive. Everyone from the conference room was installed here now, along with triple their number in children and significant others.
Even Yvette's pink and Solange's chartreuse carriers had made the relocation, sitting side by side and looking like anemic holiday decorations. All the cats were free to roam, except Maurice, who was on a leash.
Temple didn't know what would happen if she let the felines mix it up, but Louie weighed a ton. Though he had not flailed since they had left the other conference room, he had steadily slipped down her side. He now hung at hip level. One notch lower, and he'd be on the floor again.
She let him drop, realizing that the cats had wonderful chaperones anyway: kids of all sizes and ages, eager to surround them with curiosity and affection. The kitties, perhaps, would not welcome pats from sticky hands attached to high-pitched voices and sudden, jerky movements.
Temple was in the same beautiful pea-green boat with her one pussycat as every other woman in this room was with her one-plus offspring: she had a charge to watch every minute so that no one did it damage, and it did damage to no one. All Temple really longed for was a long; hot soak in a bathtub somewhere quiet.
"Though that went well."
A Colby cousin, a blond guy her age that Temple would have thought handsome if she had never seen Matt Devine, had edged over with a cup of ruddy wine punch. Since his other hand held a glass of harder stuff, Temple took the wine.
"Thanks. I actually needed this. Did the audition session really go well?"
"Absolutely. Vote's not in, and The Client hasn't spoken, but, ah, you certainly have my vote. That's off the record."
"Of course. And thanks for the support."
"I'm behind your alley cat one hundred percent too. Not that they haven't done well with Maurice, but your Louie combines streetwise charm with a certain elegance."
"I think so too. And the lucky lady cat?"
His flaxen head shook. "Pity about the petite silver. Bad break. Still, no client wants a tabloid appearance, not even for a cat. Besides, that sister of hers is a standout filly. Never even heard of the breed, but she films like a brandy Alexander goes down. Don't you think?"
"I do. Perhaps Yvette could have a cameo role."
His pale head shook. "In this business, you're either top cat, or no cat."
"So Maurice's career is--?"
"You've heard of the dodo?"
"As in . . . dead as a doornail?"
He nodded. "I must mingle. No one should suspect a preference."
With that he ambled away ... to the side of Savannah Ashleigh.
No doubt, Temple thought, too weary to temper her newly acquired Las Vegas cynicism, he would tell Savannah that she had an edge in his opinion. But he didn't carry her any libations. Perhaps he preferred her hands free.
The wine punch was too strong for Temple's burgeoning headache, but nothing from the bar interested her, and the kids were all drinking something dark green, which would probably be super-sweet and sticky.
Midnight Louie, she noticed, wasted not a second in sprinting away from the kiddie corner, where Solange and Yvette were cornered back to back, ears flattening as dozens of sticky fingers patted them right on that prize-winning doming.
Savannah Ashleigh was doing nothing to protect the Persian siblings, having changed into something less comfortable but more befitting the season--a white leather jumpsuit festooned with star-shaped silver studs. No doubt the super large star rather lewdly studding her right breast was supposed to represent the one that had led the Wise Men to the manger.
Temple trailed Louie, nervous about the havoc his alley-cat habits might wreak among such delicacies as a Christmas tree decorated with Venetian glass ornaments with a mini-mountain of exquisitely wrapped presents beneath it. This was Louie's first Christmas indoors, as far as Te
mple knew, and she had no idea how civilized he would be.
Much to her surprise, he avoided this tempting pile of twinkling lights, fragile decorations and beribboned, bright papers begging to be pounced on, torn, crushed and then pursued.
"Worried about your pal?" Kendall asked.
Temple's statuesque guide looked truly elegant in burgundy velvet, much more the yuppie boss's daughter that she was.
"Just watching. He seems fascinated by the chimney. Maybe it's those eight tiny reindeer atop the roof. They look kind of mousy from here."
"Don't let our art director hear you! That's his creation."
Kendall smiled fondly, and Temple realized that she must have attended these parties as a child herself.
"Daddy adores these hokey events. Sophisticated New York adman, and yet he insists on playing Santa Claus every year. I shouldn't give the surprise away, but pretty soon Santa will come sliding down the chimney--there's a little hatch into the kitchen next door--and it's ho-ho-ho time and presents for all. Then Santa goes back up the chimney and the party's over for another year."
Kendall sighed. "We've all told Daddy it's not necessary any more, and rather undignified, at his age and weight, to keep donning cotton batting and less padding every year to go wriggling up and down that chimney. He could just appear at the door like every other homemade Santa in town.
"But it's a tradition, and Daddy just loves family traditions. They all do, Colbys, Janoses, Renaldis." Kendall's nostalgic look soured.
She ripped her martini, a big enough sip that the floating olive barged into those perfectly aligned Scarsdale teeth. "That's probably why so many of us intermarry; as kids we see each other early and often. Not always a good idea. That's my ex over there. Carlo. He prefers Carl."
Her nod singled out an attractive, dark-haired man in round, horn-rimmed glasses, a Renaldi who was neither olive nor Lombardy poplar tree. "Even after a divorce, there's no getting away from one another."
"Did you have children?"
"Not us. Not married long enough. But we would have, I suppose, if Carl could have torn himself away from his sports cars long enough."
Louie had paused before the faux fireplace, sizing up the wall-board chimney. Temple kept an eye on him, but her mind was meandering elsewhere.
"You know, Kendall, what you say reminds me of the Rothschild family."
"The Rothschild family? You know them?"
"Not the current generation, or their ancestors. But that's how they became the premiere banking family of Europe, despite being Jewish at a time when most Jews were confined to ghettos. The Rothschilds had lots of sons and daughters, and those had lots more sons and daughters. So the first cousins married each other when they grew up to keep the business in the family. Outsider sons-in-law were drafted into banking too."
"We're not that bad!" Kendall looked alarmed. "The Colbys, Janoses and Renaldis are hardly related. It's quite a tribute to Daddy, setting up shop, so to speak, with army buddies from a very different side of the social street way back in the sixties."
"I can understand it. Common military service forges strong bonds. Were they stationed overseas, or what?"
"Vietnam," Kendall said ominously, in low tones. "The older generation doesn't like to talk about it. We weren't around then, but I understand the worst trauma was afterward, coming home, when the peaceniks had turned the country around and returning vets were called baby-killers to their faces."
"Really!" Temple, shocked, recalled her aunt Kit telling her how much she didn't know about the sixties just last night. She'd have to check some books out of the library.
Kendall nodded. "Not that Daddy served in an enlisted man's unit. He was attached somewhere else, but he must have crossed paths with the other men at some point. All the older men in that war were scarred somehow. Dad and Tony and Victor never talk about it. That must have been especially hard on Victor and Tony, they were second-generation Americans, gung ho to serve their country. Then they come home and they're treated like criminals. Nobody in your family was involved in Vietnam?"
Temple frowned. "I'm the youngest of five. I guess Dad was a family man. Were men actually being drafted then?"
"Oh, yes. Daddy's generation doesn't talk about it, but they were so hush-hush we kids actually got curious enough to look it up. The demonstrators were hippies who claimed that the draftees were all poor guys, while kids from wealthy families got college exemptions. When I heard about that, I became even prouder of Dad. He's never said it, but he didn't have to go to Vietnam. That's why Victor and Tony are so loyal to him. Apparently, he was higher in rank, but he stood by them."
Temple nodded. All this was Greek to her. It was scary what you didn't know about your parents' pasts, as if you assumed they began when you did and you both accumulated only common memories. Was one of her brothers or sisters a Vietnam baby, conceived simply to get a deferment? She didn't know what the rules were then, but they could have shaped her entire life, and she would never even know it. The sixties was such a crucial decade. She did know that. What were her parents like then? Maybe nothing like she thought.
"Your cat's gone," Kendall said.
Temple looked again at the chimney. Not even the dangling stockings were stirring, and Louie was nowhere in sight.
"Look!" a childish voice halloed. "Lookie. Kit-ty, Mom-my!"
The real "Mommy" looked up. Temple followed her example. Oh, Great Marley's Ghost! Louie wasn't gone. He had just sprouted wings. He now perched atop the cotton-batting simulated snow edging the chimney top, black as a lump of coal dropped from the cardboard Santa's pocket as he sat laughing in his sleigh above it all.
The eight tiny reindeer looked much bigger now in comparison to Louie's silhouette, and their glitter-dusted hooves seemed ready to kick Louie off Santa's territory.
"Louie get down."
An adult chuckle sounded in the quiet room at Temple's command. "That cat is just a natural center of attention."
The speaker was Gerald, the senior member of The Client, but Temple's business instincts had decamped for the moment. How was Louie going to get down? And would he? Cats were notorious for scaling neighborhood Mount Everests like Sherpa guides, then stalling at the top until the fire department sent a ladder unit to get them, which most fire departments wouldn't do nowadays.
No firemen were in attendance here, and admen did not strike Temple as a particularly athletic breed.
"Louie, you come down," Temple ordered, fire in her eyes and voice.
He looked at her, then considered the assembled humans staring up at him and found the size and awestruck quality of the audience good. So, he promptly obeyed her.
"Amazing!" The Client, all four, spoke as one the moment Louie vanished down the chimney.
All eyes now fixed on the painted black hearth. The room was so still, despite the children, that everyone heard a discreet thump as Louie's four feet touched floor. He ambled out, looking right and left, as if noting the presence of subjects.
He finally stopped at Temple's feet, looked up with sober green eyes, and meowed plaintively.
"Aaaah," said the crowd.
She wanted to strangle him, but there were too many witnesses. So she picked him up and patted his head, which probably suffered from mediocre doming, but neither Temple nor Louie would know, and neither would care.
"You could have fallen," she said, infected by the maternal concern radiating like winter heat all around her.
He responded with his most contemptuous look. So much for the power of parental love. Now she knew how mothers of teenagers felt, especially in public.
The din and festivities were resuming. Glasses clinked, children whined for Santa and every third one seemed to be dropping a glass. Luckily, the glasses were all made of plastic, but the green stuff was as sticky as Temple had surmised when she joined some other women in bending down to blot it up with cocktail napkins.
As soon as she was done, she collected Louie again, who had rem
ained beside her. She shifted his weight to glance at her watch.
Only two more hours to go before this command performance was over. Two hours!
Louie watched her with a wrinkled brow. Then he glanced back to the scene of his most recent attention-getting device.
"You've done chimneys before, Louie," Temple whispered. "I'm surprised at you, repeating an effect. That's hardly professional. Max would never do it."
Louie growled softly and pushed away with all four feet, effecting his release. He stalked to the corner where the Ashleigh cats were still attracting too much attention. Louie's arrival diverted their fans. While Solange and Yvette repaired mauled ruffs and tails, Louie sat like an offended sea cow and allowed the children to run their sticky fingers over his shoulders and pull his tail. He flashed Temple a wounded look.
Now what was that all about? she wondered. But not for long. The Client was descending on her en masse, begging to hear about Louie's reputed crime-fighting exploits.
Temple wanted to be at Aunt Kit's. She wanted a bubble bath and peace and quiet. She actually wanted to be home in Las Vegas, where it was warm and where the only hubbub to interrupt tranquil days of desert sun and forty million tourists breezing through town was the occasional nearby murder . . .
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