“I wasn’t,” Temple said severely. Danny was like a favorite old-fashioned uncle, always trying to fix her up with a steady beau.
“Well, I’d think you’d be dying to see our friend Matt’s new improved look.”
“I didn’t think he could improve on it.”
“Not personally,” Danny said, rolling his eyes with some of the old spirit. “I’m talking about his . . . decor.”
It occurred to Temple that she could learn everything she wanted to learn about that right here and now. From Danny, if she worked it right.
“You’ve been helping Matt out,” she said in a leading way.
“Au contraire. The dear boy has been helping me out.”
Temple remained silent, the key to good interviewing technique.
Danny looked down to watch himself swinging his fragile designer sunglasses by one bow. It was a new quirk, as if he were measuring the seconds the concealing tinted lenses were away from his face, his eyes.
“He’s a damn good counselor.”
Temple smiled, proud of them both. It must be an uneasy alliance: a celibate ex-priest and a gay man bereft of his partner. Somehow they had bridged the cultural and religious divide, and it said a lot for both of them. It showed her hope, and her anxieties about Life in General lifted a little.
“He doesn’t have the slightest notion,” Danny added.
“About what?”
“Anything, my dear one.” He leaned close, voice lowered. “I’ve brought him kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century as far as decor goes. Someone else will have to drag him in the rest of the way. Not my type, if you know what I mean.”
Temple did, and tried not to blush. “So, what worked?”
“You.”
Oh. She’d hoped Danny didn’t know about that.
“What a little motivator you are.” He took her arm, walked her farther out into the parking lot.
“I’m engaged,” Temple said. Firmly.
“You’re between engagements, as far as I can tell. Honestly, Munchkin. You know he’s—well, divine. He needs guidance. Be still, my . . . heart. You’re lucky I’m bereaved, or I wouldn’t answer for myself here. And, he’s depressingly straight. What’s holding you back?”
“You know.” Temple couldn’t quite keep her voice even.
“I know even you can’t keep up the pretense that you’re sufficiently spoken for to keep the strings of your heart from zinging in another direction.”
“Danny! This is none of your business.”
“It’s all the business I have left.”
Temple couldn’t meet the blaze of anger and loss in his eyes. Nor could she argue with his accurate diagnosis. Still, she said, “I am not your matchmaker project. Not even if it would . . . ease something for you right now.”
“Matt has become my project. Such a dear boy. Reminds me of myself before I dared come out, even to myself. There are such standards for a boy, Temple. Being manly. Being hard and callous. Being tough. Being a braggart about women, even if they’re not your thing. Demeaning everything honest and soft and true for fear you’ll show a weakness some boy who’s even more uncertain than you will kick a hole through, just to prove he’s all right.”
She felt tears sting her eyes. Danny was talking universals. She remembered how girls had to hide too, pretend to be blithe and uncaring in the face of relentless bitchiness. To pretend when your heart was breaking.
“Awful years,” she said, thinking that pretending and heartbreaking could track one for many years afterward.
“No argument. We must speed him through them.”
“We?”
“It’ll take both of us. Now, I’ve civilized him in the decor department. It would help if you would . . . bless my efforts with your approval.”
“Just how much approval are we talking here?”
“Follow your heart and your healthy libido. At least back up my efforts.”
“You make a very odd advocate,” Temple said.
“I’m only following the path you trail-blazed. That red suede Kagan couch is to die for.”
“It’s a Goodwill find.”
“I can guess who found it. And you let him have it?” Danny frowned playfully. “You were caving even then. I’m afraid my domestic improvements have been more upscale. Was that naughty of me?”
Maybe frowns were catching because Temple was doing it now. Despite the grisly crisis she had to hie back to at the New Millennium, she was dying to see Matt’s new “home improvements.” She would also die before asking him to show her personally. Maybe she could talk Electra into a private preview . . .
“I see it was,” Danny said. His thoughtful expression had turned bleak again.
“Oh, dammit, Danny! I’ll, ah, say . . . I don’t know what I’ll say.”
“I already said it. I told him he needs a woman’s touch for the final fillips. Linens, silk flowers—nothing allergy prone in the bedroom and none of those beastly throw rugs you women are always having underfoot.”
Temple thought of the faux goat hair rug under her coffee table and winced.
“You don’t!” Danny sighed. “I see I must offer my discerning services in your quarters next. A girl who would let somebody else have a fifties Vladimir Kagan couch! Tsk. You are an angel on earth.”
Danny donned his sunglasses, bussed her cheeks with Italian film star gusto, and left in the silver Spyder convertible that made her Miata look like a Barbie car.
Louie’s Choice
Of course, I am lounging under the oleander bushes circling the parking lot when my Miss Temple and Mr. Danny Dove have their little tête-à-tête, as we Francophiles call it. (I had thought Francophiles had something to do with 1930s Spain, but apparently not. Those French do get around.)
I confess that I am deeply worried about my usually reliable roommate. It is those female hormones that produce that unreliable state called “heat.”
At least in my species it is a come-and-go sort of thing (much to my regret). However, human females have a 24/7 case of it, which is appropriate to Las Vegas. Perhaps it is only in Las Vegas that this condition occurs, as in other aberrations of the human species.
I can usually find some way to assist my Miss Temple in matters of crime and apprehension but now my apprehension is directed at the fact that I do not know how to handle this pesky situation.
It appears that I need female advice. The dedicated operative is never too proud to consult experts no matter how uppity they might be. I decide to make the rounds of my acquaintanceship. So, while Miss Temple is safely on the job at the New Millennium, I vow to scour the city for useful suggestions.
First, I go to the empty lot opposite Maylord’s Fine Furniture, which is looking a little seedy since the shocking events at its opening revealed a business plan that involved discrimination, harassment, felony, and murder.
The lot is empty of everything but trash, so I know Ma Barker and her clan have left and are working their way toward the Circle Ritz, as I had advised.
Now, I only have to find out how far they have gotten.
This is like tracking a tribe of Paiutes on the move on the wild Mojave Desert in the nineteenth century. It requires that I think like a scavenger rather than a sophisticated dude about town. So, I hopscotch northwest back toward the Circle Ritz, eyeing Dump-ster environs and the empty concrete corridors behind strip shopping centers. I am not talking about the big boys and girls—Strip Shopping Centers—here, just the small fringe one-story layouts that surround the flash, glitter, and cash of Las Vegas Boulevard, to use the Strip’s formal moniker.
If my Miss Temple knew how I was sanding my pads to the bone for her wayward heart . . . !
I catch up with the crew behind the Shanghai Noon all-you-can-eat buffet. They are dozing unseen, natch, in the noonday sun, but Ma Barker has posted two goons on guard in case any mad dogs or Englishmen show up.
“Hey, it is just me!” I say as Tiger and Tom jump out of nowhere,
fangs bared and whiskers and nostrils flared. “I need to check with Ma Barker.”
“Ah, he needs his mommy,” Tiger snarls, his tone dripping mockery.
“Not to teach you manners,” I reply as I box the sneer off his mustachios. “C’mon, Tigue. I need a morning workout.”
The way I work it out is I duck as Tiger lunges, and Tom ends up giving Tiger another facial with his shivs. Heh-heh.
My mental comment is echoed by two short meows behind my back.
The lady in question has been roused by our set-to. In this case, this is no lady, it is my mother, my esteemed dam, my . . . ow!
She has boxed my ears. “That is for making jackasses of my guards.” She boxes the guards’ ears. “That is for being taken in by a smooth operator. Now.” She turns to me.
“What can I do for you besides rearrange your silly mug?”
No one can accuse Ma Barker of being anything but even pawed.
“This is private,” I tell her.
She jerks her head over her black-like-me shoulder and leads me to an overturned hounds-tooth-pattern loveseat that looks as if it last served as a rat condominium.
However, it is cool under there, and quiet.
“You are sure this Circle Ritz place we are headed for has lots of sheltering shrubbery?” she asks me for the fourth time.
“And even more soft-touch humans.”
“Hmph. I am not fond of a parking lot view.”
“Very low traffic, and the vehicles are mostly late models with few oil drips.”
“It is taking a lot of my street cred to herd this group uptown. It had better be worth it.”
“I will be able to keep an eye on you there.”
“Not a plus. On the other hand, I will be able to keep an eye on you.”
I give Ma a good onceover. She has recovered somewhat from her solo match with a marauding raccoon, but one eye is still swollen half shut and her black coat is full of claw tracks. She licks her ragged bib into shape and sinks back against the spewing stuffing, half sitting, half reclining like a sultan.
“So what advice do you need, grasshopper, other than to not make a fine point of it with my guards?”
I smooth my whiskers and satin lapels, both of which her boys had mussed. But not much. “It is about the human species.”
“You ask me? Who has had as little to do with them as possible?”
“It is about the female of the species.”
“Anyone I know?”
“My associate.”
“You mean your sugar mama.”
“Please! I give Miss Temple so much more than she gives me.”
“That is always the way with our kind, and what do we get for it?”
I am not about to go into a Us and Them riff with her. “They have strange mating habits.”
“You noticed?”
“Although the females are ever capable of being in heat, they attempt to ignore the fact.”
“Which the males do not.”
“No. This creates a certain tension.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Anyway, the humans aim at solo long-term mating.”
“Like some birds. Dodo birds.”
“And wolves.”
“Wild dogs! They are no role model for the superior species.”
“Right. Anyway, my roomie has found herself in a perplexing situation for the breed.”
“She is with litter?”
“No!”
“Then you have no rivals in the offing, at least.”
“This is not about me, Ma. It is about understanding her. Which seems to be the goal of the human males around her too. Mr. Max was her long-term squeeze, but now it looks like Mr. Matt is edging him out.”
“Sounds like a horse race rather than a romantic quandary. At least she gets to choose. I had to take all comers, which is why you had a calico sister and a gray brother.”
“Had?” I ask gingerly.
Normally, we street kits are cut out from the litter so fast by chance, death, and animal control that we would not recognize a sibling if it stood up and sang “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” right in front of us. I am one cat in a million for knowing who my ma and pa are, but I am one cat in a million anyway, just for being alive after a street birth. That is without mentioning my entrepreneurial success with an investigative operation.
“I do not know where they go,” she agrees, “or even when sometimes. Motherhood is way overrated. It was a boon when the Cage Ladies arranged for a tubal ligation.”
I do not ask what this “tubal ligation” is. It sounds like doctor or lawyer language, and one usually does not wish to decipher what they are talking about, which is why they end up with all the money and yachts on Lake Mead.
But I do wonder if a “tubal ligation” might be the answer for Miss Temple.
I ask Ma. Who laughs.
“She does not have my problem. Tomcats do not tiptoe around what they wish to be up to, like your roommate’s suitors. One would think that she could easily accommodate only two, but humans are a mystery.”
I cannot help sounding a bit whiny as I lay out my case to my esteemed dam, known as a “queen” in fancy cat breeding circles. Which are where they matchmake pedigrees and put dudes and dudettes into forced breeding arenas. Barbaric!
“I am afraid I am a wee bit selfish at this point,” I admit. “I favor Mr. Max because his various mysterious ways keep him from coming around too often, and I get full bed privileges in his absence. On the other hand, Mr. Matt offers Miss Temple more constant attention, but I fear he will boot me out of both bed and bedroom, and where will I find another roomie as attentive and even-tempered as my Miss Temple?”
Ma Barker shakes her venerable, raccoon-scabbed head. She is one tough cookie.
“You have become the fourth leg in a love triangle involving two alien species, Louie. Face it, you will never win. You have been trying to live in two worlds: wild and domestic. You will have to make a choice.”
“That is just it! I can tip the balance, if I feel like it. That is a lot of responsibility. I lean toward Mr. Max. He is wild and free and wily and noble. But Mr. Matt really needs a good home. Mr. Max and I know we are two of kind, and there is no love lost between us, but there is the kind of wary respect we both crave. Mr. Matt would not shove me aside on purpose, but he is a domestic born, loyal and true, and I share his quest to find a safe place in the world.”
“Louie, Louie, Louie.” Ma shakes her head. “I blame it on your coming from a broken home, but then most of us do. You have been a good boy. I realize that you want my gang moved uptown so we can live out our declining years under the watchful eyes of you and your humans. What you worry about is that your humans have feet of clay. They are not as stable as you had hoped. You will just have to see that they do the right thing, and then everybody will be happy.”
Argh! Seeing that everybody does the right thing so that everybody is happy is the one thing that does not make this world go round. In fact, reality is just the opposite.
I bid Ma Barker adieu and move on.
Miss Midnight Louise is sunning herself in front of the canna lilies that fringe the koi pond that used to be my office view and private fishing hole.
The koi are as fat and wet as ever, and come pucker-lipped up to the pond edge trolling for tourist bread crumbs, as if Midnight the Merciless had not suddenly cast his shadow in their sunshine once again.
I plough a paw through the water just to make my presence known.
“Be nice,” Miss Louise admonishes.
“Why?”
“This is my territory now, and I get plenty of legal fish and lobster from the house chef. You must learn the difference between game and decorative fish.”
“They are all game to me,” I announce, sitting on the water-dewed stones and curling my longest extremity around my toes.
“You are a girl,” I tell her.
“Obviously.”
“You have had the
operation that makes this condition moot.”
“Obviously.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Being the object of male attention?”
“Not a bit,” she says. “That was always a nuisance. It is such a relief that a small surgical procedure can put an end to tomcats harassing one. A puss needs a tomcat like a fish needs a bicycle.”
I frown. “Fish have nothing to peddle with but fins.”
“Tomcats have nothing to peddle but fishy lines.”
“So, why does a modern woman need a man?”
“She does not.” Louise’s yellow eyes squint into gleaming slits. “Ah. You inquire about that human hussy you are shacked up with.”
“Miss Temple is not a hussy! That is the problem. She is only able to deal with one dude at a time. I do not understand.”
Miss Louise sits up and actually smoothes my agitated ears with her tongue. It is a daughterly gesture, which I know by the fact that she is fixed and has no reason at all to give me more than five in the face.
“Poor Louie. They are a strange breed. It is always a risk to try to depend upon such a fickle kind. I know you thought you had a permanent arrangement—”
“It still is!” But I am no longer so sure.
“Yet,” says Miss Louise, patting the tip of my tail in a most patronizing way, “they will go off and leave us without a thought. Move. Advertise for new homes because of . . . change of address. Change of circumstance. Babies. Is that it?”
“No! No babies. Yet. It is just that I sense she is having a change of heart. That is a very mysterious process and alien to our kind.”
“Yes. We do not give our hearts lightly, but when we do it is eternal. That is why I will never consent to being owned.’ ”
“I am not owned! I own. I am in a position to bestow favor on one or another of Miss Temple’s suitors. I lean to picking the one who suits my habits best, but realize that is perhaps not as noble as I could be.”
“The way to be noble, Louie, is to let others be as noble as they can be.”
I gaze into Louise’s gilt eyes. She is not quite my spitting image (except when she is mad, often at me) but she is a sassy little kit and I would not be loath to call her my daughter. If she was my daughter. Which is still up for grabs. Like my Miss Temple.
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