Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Glory Diaz was one of those sad women with absolutely no feminine physical graces who dressed like a Barbie doll.

  Temple had often cursed the inescapable femininity of a short, small woman bequeathed to her by some Billie Burke, Good-Witch-Glynda-style godmother, but she’d never felt like a caricature of it, the way Glory looked.

  This woman had been way too obvious for the Maylords corporate culture. Maylords hired few women: Janice, several understated female interior designers uniformed in smooth bobs and low-heeled pumps, and of course that witchy woman Beth Blanchard, another Human Resources Department mistake.

  And then there was the exhibitionism rumor. No wonder Glory had been fired while her orientation seminar seat was still warm. Apparently very warm.

  “So,” Temple said, never one to beat around the er, bush, “who hired you and who fired you?”

  “I wasn’t fired. I left.”

  Temple nodded, then sipped mouth-curdlingly tart-sweet limeade. “So who hired you?”

  “Mark Ainsworth, that rascal.” Glory had simpered on the word “rascal.”

  The only “rascal” Temple could picture the anxious, snobby manager playing was the role of weasel.

  “And why did you decide to part ways?”

  Glory, coy, leaned back into the couch corner. “Darling? Can’t you guess?”

  “No—”

  “Maybe you don’t know Maylords’s nickname among the initiated.”

  “Maybe I don’t.”

  Glory simpered again. “Gaylords, darlin’.”

  Temple nodded. Slowly. Trying to decide if this was rampant homophobia or . . . a clue.

  “I should tell you I’m a friend of Danny Dove’s,” she said.

  “Oh, what a sweetie! Always so respectful, but very hip, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oddly enough, I do. How did you meet him?”

  “He came around a lot during orientation to visit Simon. It’s hard to miss star power on that level! DD was so charmingly proud of Simon. Poor boy. Never had a chance. I read in the paper what happened to Simon, though I’m not surprised.”

  “Not surprised that Simon was killed?”

  “That somebody was killed. The way that place is run is murder. Dear Simon. Such a doll. And Danny was so nice to me when he came in. A class act. More than I can say for Mark Ainsworth. Probably because I wouldn’t give out. I have my standards.”

  “Wait a minute. You wouldn’t ‘give out.’ But . . . you just said, ‘Gaylords.’”

  And now that Glory Diaz had mentioned it, Temple had to agree that a lot of the store’s staff was gay. It had never occurred to her, maybe because she’d always worked in the arts. So . . . Gaylords. More gay men on staff than in any artistic endeavor? Maybe. Funny. Kenny Maylord didn’t look or act like Mr. Liberal. Temple would bet he was straight, although having a wife and kids didn’t always prove it.

  A pattern was trying to form in her mind, but something in her fought it. Something was keeping her from getting it. . . .

  She glanced at Glory, whose long-nailed fingers were fanned on her knee, ruffling the hem of her skirt, which was retreating upward.

  And got it. The woman exhibitionist who had been quietly fired after the first days of the training sessions.

  Grandview, of course!

  “Does the name ‘Grandview’ mean anything to you?” Temple asked.

  “You little minx! How did you find out my computer password?”

  “Computer password?”

  “For Maylords, for as long as I was there, which wasn’t long. That was my password. I picked it myself. We all did.”

  “What did you put on the computer?”

  “Oh, any possible friends or clients I knew who might patronize Maylords. I put in the entire cast of La Cage au Folles and the Shemale Celebrities Revue at the Oasis Hotel. Judy and Joan and Marilyn and Madonna. It was all pretty sketchy, dear. Most of my friends don’t have the money to buy those Maylords things. They’re all putting it into wax jobs and laser hair removal and boob jobs and hormones, honey. You do know what I mean by hormones?”

  Temple was speechless. “You’re . . . in transition, aren’t you?”

  “How nice of you to put it so dellll-i-cately. Indeed diddley-oh-doo, darlin.’ I am not to the manner born, believe it or not.”

  “You’re a transvestite.”

  “Oh, my, no. I’m so much more than that.”

  “An exhibitionist transsexual?”

  “If you think so.” Glory snickered and pulled her hem up a discreet two inches more. “We are so misunderstood.”

  “Why did you take a job at Maylords, and then blow it, by playing with your skirt at the orientation sessions?”

  “Oh! You’ve heard of me. I created a stir. That rascal Ainsworth acted as if I hadn’t raised an eyebrow. Just dumped on me after leading me on.”

  “Leading you on how?”

  “Giving me this pitch about what a ‘special’ environment Maylords is. How certain lifestyles are fine there. I think he got miffed when I wouldn’t let him into my Olgas on the first interview. I was dead meat after that. And I only lasted a few days more, which is probably eons more than that Ainsworth wuss would have lasted in any interesting sense of the word. A bunch of cowards, if you ask me. Pretend to be so with it, and such simps anyway.”

  Temple considered all she didn’t know about the gay world, the lesbian world, the transvestite world, the transsexual world. It would fill Lake Mead.

  Temple wondered again if Simon had been killed because he was gay. Not just because he was gay but because he didn’t fit into this particular gay world. He was basically invulnerable to the kind of pressure that seemed to rule Maylords. He had a protector, Danny. How awful if Simon’s very relationship with Danny had doomed him! The protector had been a liability.

  And why hire a transvestite, and fire her? Him. Almost immediately. Temple didn’t believe Glory had quit. She had to have been ousted. Just a power play? Maybe it was all about power, which would explain the illogic. Control was a terrible thing to waste.

  “Honey, you are lookin’ in need of something stronger than Kool-Aid. I have some very nice Pernod absinthe, lovely licorice taste and divine poison green color, like lime Kool-Aid crossed with Kickapoo Joy Juice.“

  They were back to another world Temple knew little of: the snobbery of alcohol consumption combined with abstruse pop culture references she knew nothing about.

  She shook her head. “No. But what about the straight men and women on the staff? There must be some.”

  “Oh, a few. But they’re birds of passage. Once they’re sucked dry, they’re outta there.”

  Temple was afraid to ask, but she did. “ ‘Sucked dry’?”

  “That’s the real game. People aren’t hired to do their jobs. They’re suckered in to get vamped.”

  “ ‘Get vamped’? ” This was getting kinkier by the second.

  “Drained, dearie. All those former sales staff and designers from the other, less upscale furniture palaces in town. What do they have that’s valuable?”

  “They’re experienced professionals,” Temple said, merely to keep the dialogue going. She was beginning to get that qualifications were the last thing on the management minds at Maylords.

  “Aren’t you the cutest thing! Especially when you recite that bullshit. You do see that’s the last reason Maylords would hire anyone.”

  “I do?”

  “It’s the designers’ contacts, dummy! Their mailing lists that they just so happily type into their Maylord iMacs, each one offered the color of his or her choice. What a classy operation! They’re so not used to the down-and-dirty retail world, and Maylords’s snob act has them fooled. So there they are typing their life’s blood into those treacherous little i-machines, professionally speaking, spilling decades of building a client list.”

  “Which remains at Maylords when they’re let go after the first three months, as Ainsworth threatened would happen.”
>
  “Those lists are sucked back out as soon as they’re entered, darlin’. Deliciously vicious, isn’t it? Not even a long, slow kiss-off. Just empty ’em out and shovel ‘em into the unemployment line.”

  “I can’t believe all that evil energy would be expended on . . . selling furniture. I mean, Mozart had his murderous rival Solari and Snow White had her Evil Queen, but that was for really elevated purposes like art and . . . a beauty contest. But for furniture—?”

  “ ‘Who’s the most beautiful bitch of all?’ Life is a bitch, darlin’, and I’m doing my best to become one as fast as I can.”

  “Speaking of which, where does Beth Blanchard fit in all this? She acts like she has some secret inner track.”

  “Have you ever heard of a fag hag?”

  “I am from the midwest, but I wasn’t born in a cornfield. Whatever, I don’t see what’s in it for her.”

  “She can be head bitch. And”—Glory sipped her Kool-Aid until her collagen-enhanced lips puckered—“like all of those delusional types, she was the devil in the heavenly chorus cherishing the notion of seducing a choirboy to the other side.”

  Temple considered. “Which choirboy?”

  But she already knew.

  Who was the fairest of them all? Simon.

  Glory shook her permanently curled poly-something locks. “Poor lad. Blind as a bat to that sort of predatory nuttiness. Polite, charmingly aloof, living in his own world, not understanding the chaos he caused.”

  Temple squirmed on the floral poppies upholstering the sofa. That could describe Matt too. Both men attractive and too decent to use it. Both unavailable. Perhaps maddeningly unavailable to some. . . . Women had been suffering from that kind of problem for millennia. It was mind-bending to see that some men did too. Was it really getting to be an equal-opportunity world, even down to victimization?

  “Oh, my dear girl. Don’t get weepy on Glory. The world is mean and man uncouth, or why would I want to be what I want to be?”

  “That’s Brecht!” Temple accused.

  “What! I’m not Brecht. What is Brecht?”

  “That ‘world is mean and man uncouth’ line.”

  “I heard it in a trans revue, dear. It could be Rod McKuen, for all I know. Or Shakespeare. Speaking of dear old Willie, that Blanchard babe is typecast for that play.”

  Temple ran Glory’s wild free associations through her head. “ ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ ”

  “Very good! You should try out for Attack of the Forty-Foot Woman or Invasion of the Booby Snatchers.”

  “I don’t have the physical attributes for either role. You’re saying Beth Blanchard could have stabbed Simon?’

  “Well, honey-dew, she did everything on earth a real shemale could do to seduce the poor bloke. And he turned her down, cold. I saw it myself. As they say, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ I can’t wait until I get there myself. I’m ready for dispensing a little fury, you see what I mean?”

  “I do,” Temple said, standing up. “I really must be going, but thanks for clueing me in. On so much. And you’re really not bitter about being fired by Maylords?”

  “ ‘Of all the gin joints in the world,’ it ran on pure venom. But it was a fun gig while it lasted. I shall always remember Paris. I wore my very best stainless-steel garters, specially purchased at a vintage shop to go with my pink Schiaperelli hose. One of my finer moments, despite the outcome. My dear, I adore your tangerine nail polish. It is soooo Maylords this month. Perhaps you should seek permanent employment there, but do beware.”

  Temple leaned forward to lap up this last scoop.

  “Do not pull your hems above your panty line. Not that you have a panty line. That I can see from here. Perhaps if you gave me a head start—”

  Mortified, Temple blushed, thanked Glory for her candor, and got the heck out of there.

  In the stairwell, she paused to jerk at her panty line. Maybe she needed to buy a thong to prevent further embarrassment.

  Sure.

  Dead Zone

  Temple only had time after her intriguing interview with Glory Diaz to rush home and leave a fresh heap of Free-to-be-Feline in the bowl for Louie to reject . . . when he came back from wherever he was to reject it, and he would.

  And to rifle her closet for something funeral-worthy.

  She began to panic when she realized that the newer fashions nowadays were as gauzy and floral as something Loretta Young might have worn in a ’30s film, and she had scarfed up a bunch of them.

  It was true that black was welcomed at weddings now, while color was appropriate at funerals. Yet she felt she needed to symbolize the desolation she felt on Danny’s behalf. He was theater people: symbols soothed him.

  She was startled when a huge furry tarantula leg brushed her bare calf. And jumped a little.

  Louie had eeled in from somewhere and stood gazing up at her with soulful green eyes. No doubt he had just surveyed the fresh Free-to-be-Feline in his bowl and was begging for a reprieve.

  “If only,” she told him, “I had been born in the basic black you favor, I’d be set for every occasion. I don’t suppose cats go to wakes or funerals.”

  He blinked solemnly. Temple checked the oversize watch dial on her wrist. No time to dither. In her closet she paged past overblown roses sprinkled with sequins and colorful sweater sets, everything too bright and breezy for such a sorrowful occasion.

  Finally she fingered the clothing in the farthest corner of her closet, looking for something she’d forgotten about.

  She found it. Boy, did she find it. Her fingers rubbed solid knit. Better.

  She pulled out the possibility.

  Black knit.

  Even better. Not too heavy for the time of year, but appropriately opaque. No panty line issues here. Long, full skirt, long sleeves, high neck.

  Oh.

  This was indeed her “wake” dress. She’d last worn it at Cliff Effinger’s wildly unattended and deeply unmourned showing.

  Her fingertips traced the long row of shiny black round buttons from neck to skirt hem. The dress was several seasons old, but simple enough to be a classic. The buttons reminded her of Catholic rosary beads.

  Maybe that’s why the last time she had worn it she and Matt Devine had almost had a nuclear meltdown on her living room sofa. The memory warmed her cheeks. She was never going to wear this dress again.

  But . . . it was the only appropriate thing and Matt would definitely not be attending this wake, so—

  Temple began frantically working pea-shaped buttons out of too-tight buttonholes.

  Temple kept the Miata’s top up and the air conditioner on all the way to the Bide-a-Wee Mortuary.

  Like wedding chapels, funeral parlors were established Las Vegas landmarks. The Bide-a-Wee was as high-end as a theme mortuary could get in this town, and catered to star performers.

  Its notion of tasteful restraint ran to slabs of polished black marble and pewter and gilt accents, very Egyptian temple.

  Temple herself was wearing her Stuart Weitzman black suede pumps with the steel heels. They were several seasons old, but age did not wither nor custom stale Weitzman chic.

  The Miata was too much a clown car on this sad occasion, all gleaming red grin, but at least the black cloth top sat atop it like a sober homburg.

  Temple had abandoned her signature tote bag for a simple black file clutch bag. She felt nervous, and wiped her palms on the flowing skirt.

  She hadn’t seen Danny since she’d brought him the news of Simon’s death. How he was holding up, she had no idea. She could guess, and didn’t want to imagine any more.

  The entry door was coffered and painted black, centered with a huge brass Ebenezer Scrooge knocker. One might easily glimpse the face of a ghost of one’s choosing in that reflective surface.

  Not Simon, though. Simon’s face had faded. Temple had only met him once, and forever after would confuse him with Matt. That fact made her even more uneasy. She was confused enou
gh about Matt already. Luckily his face did not show up in the knocker.

  The door opened easily for its size and her steel heels were sinking into ultraplush carpet the moment she stepped inside. Aubergine plush carpet; in other words, royal purple.

  Temple mushed her way across the entry area, hearing the faint tones of Enya, supposedly the top musical choice of chichi spas and New Age harbors of all things massage, acupuncture, aromatherapy, and outrageously expensive.

  Apparently top-drawer funeral parlors were on the same play list.

  The faintest odor of ylang-ylang was in exquisite harmony with the delicately echoing music. She didn’t know why such elegant touches played on her nerves, but they did. She’d identified a body a few months before in a New York City medical examiner’s facility, which was worlds away from this overrefined environment. Still, they felt like cousins under the skin. And she was here to see another dead body, no matter how formally displayed.

  Imagine her shock when a Fontana brother in a dead black suit appeared before her like a well-tailored angel from a 1940s Frank Capra movie, only this was the angel of death.

  “Rico?” she guessed.

  “Emilio,” he corrected. Gently. “You are here for the Foster viewing, I assume.”

  “I am. What are you here for?”

  “Likewise.” He pulled his somber sleeves down over his white cuffs and the diamond-studded onyx Harley Davidson cuff links that peeked out despite his best efforts. “It was short notice,” he apologized. “May I show you to the viewing chamber?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re . . . uh, officiating.”

  “Danny Dove is highly regarded by all the major hotels and casinos in Vegas, especially the Crystal Phoenix. We are acting as chauffeurs and general factotums for the sad formalities.”

  “You’re driving the hearses?”

  “There are no hearses. Only the Lauren, Versace, St. Laurent, and Elton for those closest to the bereaved.”

  “The Fontana brothers are acting as chauffeurs for Gangsters Legendary Limos?”

  “And security.”

  Temple knew each carried an appropriately black steel Beretta. “I don’t get it.”

  “We have a small financial stake in Gangsters,” Emilio noted modestly. “It was the least we could do, making our fleet available to the bereaved. The Malachite Room is to your right, first door.”