Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Mattresses.” He had noticed a low-lit area off to one side furnished with naked box springs and tufted brocaded mattresses but it hardly seemed the glamour part of the showroom. That was reserved for the parade of lavishly accoutered room arrangements that fanned off the central courtyard.

  The centerpiece of that courtyard right now was a vivid burnt-orange Nissan Murano SUV, the object of a prize drawing. Somehow mattresses seemed way out of its league.

  “Guess how I spent my day getting ready for this do?” Janice asked.

  “Hanging pictures?”

  “Hell, no. All the pictures I hung were taken down and rearranged by some self-important babe from Accessories. I spent the day on my back—”

  “Janice! This place isn’t that bad—?”

  “On my back under the frigging mattresses writing down stock numbers as all good little Maylords workers had been directed to do, while Missy Modern Art Museum was flitting about whipping display guys into undoing everything I’d done.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Welcome to the working world. I’d forgotten about office politics.”

  Matt was about to go into a sincere riff about how superior Janice’s artistic instincts were when a figure suddenly appeared before them.

  She was a tall woman with dark hair, like Molina, but unlike Molina her hair brushed her shoulders in soft, Miss Muffet curls. She was willowy to the point of scrawniness. Her face was pale and the expression on it was stern and supercilious at the same time. “People, please! No fraternizing between staff. We’re supposed to mix with guests.”

  “He’s a customer,” Janice answered.

  “Janice, please.” The laugh was short and denigrating. “We don’t have ‘customers,’ we have ‘clients.’ I know it’s hard for a former fulltime wife like you to know the difference, especially after your mall work—”

  “Mr. Devine is not on staff. He’s a potential client.”

  The woman frowned at him, displaying impressively deep vertical tracks between her brow for someone in her late twenties.

  “You’re not on staff?” She eyed him with sudden smarm. “Well. I’m Beth Blanchard, and if I can direct you to any department or sales associate—?” she suggested with sudden and unbelievable sweetness.

  “She’ll get fifty percent of the commission for that,” Janice said, “and I won’t.”

  “Well.” Beth Blanchard laughed in an unconvincing manner and shrugged her sharp shoulders. “You always have a choice at Maylords, and that includes in sales associates.”

  Janice put her hand through Matt’s arm. “If Mr. Devine wants to buy something, I’ll be happy to sell it to him all by myself.”

  “Uuuh!” Beth’s face twisted into irritation again. “We do not ‘sell’ anything at Maylords. Haven’t you learned a thing on probation?”

  Matt decided to speak up. “I suppose you give it away, then,” he said pleasantly. “Most impressive.”

  “We ‘place’ pieces with clients. We don’t sell furniture.”

  “Will I have to sign adoption papers?” he asked.

  She glared at Janice, then turned and flounced away, which she could do because she was dressed in fashionably fluttering floral chiffon, as tattered as Cinderella rags.

  “That woman acts like she’s queen bitch at the ball,” Janice said under her breath. “See what I mean about this place? It’s schizy. We’re supposed to be the best and brightest new staff Maylords has ever had, according to Kenny Maylord himself, but the minute he vanishes—and he does because the main store is in Indianapolis, with another in Palm Beach—the Wicked Witch and her Flying Monkeys come out to shake the stuffing out of us.”

  “I don’t get all this fuss about the word ‘sell.’ ”

  “They never use the word ‘sale’ in their ads. It’s all part of the upscale impression Maylords wants to make. They’d planned to donate twenty thousand dollars to the local arts fund, but nobody is objecting to this ignorant woman running around and undoing all my art placements. I did do sketches and caricatures in the mall, but I know what people like and how to present it to sell well. She hasn’t got a clue, but she tells me I’m not doing my job right, like she was somebody big’s bimbo mistress.”

  “Maybe she is.”

  Janice sighed. “Sorry, Matt. I didn’t mean to dump my workplace woes on you. This was supposed to be a party.”

  “It is. Let’s hit the buffet table again. Temple got Chef Song from the Crystal Phoenix to do the food.”

  “That’s spectacular,” Janice agreed. “And I didn’t see bitchy Beth Blanchard hanging around the tables rearranging his parsley sprigs.”

  “Chef Song would have taken his meat cleaver to her for that. On several occasions I understand that he’s almost dewhiskered the former hotel cat, Midnight Louie, for taking liberties with the koi in his special pond.”

  Janice was staring into the crowd that had swallowed Beth Blanchard, invisible pointed black hat and all.

  “I hope somebody does take at least a mat cutter to her,” Janice said. “I suppose I’ve ‘goofed off’ enough. We’re actually on salary here. The witch has already berated me for not punching my time card tonight. I thought, like with museum openings, staff attended the ceremonials as part of their jobs, without pay, but, no, it’s all on the time clock. Mind if I desert you to troll for clients who may want to . . . uh, can I say ‘buy’. . . something?”

  Sure.” Matt hoisted his glass of pale wine to show he was set for a while, and Janice left.

  He strolled along the beige travertine tiles circling the store’s perimeter, eyeing a smorgasbord of empty rooms with furniture too grand to imagine oneself using.

  He tried to spot something he could legitimately “acquire,” to give Janice a commission. Every interesting table he came near enough to read the undersized tags was way too costly for his druthers, if not his income. No wonder Temple exulted in secondhand chic: it saved dough.

  He paused before what passed for beds nowadays, a behemoth on tiered platforms, canopied and covered with enough brocade and pillows to resemble a setting from which a Louis the Someteenth might have given royal decrees.

  Matt supposed his spare box spring and mattress could use some upgrading, but Versailles or Buckingham Palace wasn’t what he had in mind.

  “Fabulous, isn’t it?” The voice rang a bell. Perhaps the one at Notre Dame?

  Matt turned. A slight man holding a large painting of rather overblown peonies also stood gazing at the Renaissance master bedroom vignette.

  “Too much,” Matt said, surprised to recognize his viewing partner.

  “I guess we were trained to the simple life.” Jerome Johnson smiled, balancing the frame edge on an upholstered chaise longe.

  “Monastic this is not,” Matt agreed.

  “So . . . what are you doing here—?” they each began in disconcerting sync.

  “I work here.” Jerome.

  “Oh, right.” Matt. “When you buttonholed me outside the radio station the other night to say hello, you mentioned that you were a ‘framer.’ “ Matt nodded at the painting. “It didn’t connect with me, what you framed.”

  Jerome had also mentioned their years in the same Catholic seminary and how vividly he remembered Matt. Far too vividly for Matt’s comfort zone.

  “So you work for Maylords,” Matt said, still feeling awkward.

  “Yeah. Tote that assembly-line original.” Jerome made a face into his sandy beard. “Did you come because—?”

  Matt had to stop that notion in the bud, the peony bud. “Janice. Janice Flanders. She works here now. A friend of mine,” he said. Firmly. “She asked me to come tonight.”

  “Oh. Janice. She’s okay.”

  Matt was about to say that Janice was more than “okay,” when he noticed someone walking briskly toward them. This was a social event. People stood and talked, or ambled and gazed.

  “Jerry!” Beth Blanchard was bearing down on another hapless victim. F
rom Jerome’s expression, he hated being called Jerry. “I want that painting in the French vignette. Now. No point dawdling in front of the displays. You can’t collect a commission anyway. You’re just a drone.”

  Matt had the impression that she had not failed to see him, but enjoyed displaying her vicious streak in front of a witness.

  Matt’s idealistic instincts urged him to defend a former fellow seminarian from this harpy in heels. His knowledge of human nature told him that interfering would only deepen the humiliation.

  She finally allowed herself to notice him. Her features showed surprise before the expression “you again” made them scowl . . . again. She was a young woman, quite presentable. There was no visible reason for her to act like Elvira Gulch on the trail of Toto, but reason seldom ruled some personalities.

  By now, he—the hapless stranger—had irritated her controlling personality as much as anybody she worked with and, God forbid, lived with.

  Matt became a placid shore on which her fury broke in vain.

  Jerome cast him a farewell wince, then moved along like a whipped cur. Matt had never seen such a graphic illustration of that cliché before. He knew Jerome felt it all the more because of his feelings for Matt himself.

  Unreturned feelings. He understood that unpleasant situation. Poor Jerome. Matt’s hands were fists, he discovered. He consciously relaxed his fingers, eased out his breath. Under the normal surface of everyday life stirred the monsters of the deep: everybody’s history and hurts, roiling like crosscurrents.

  Matt stopped himself from watching the unlikely couple leave, and turned back to stare at the vignette, seeing only the baroque curlicues on the brocades writhing like embroidered serpents.

  “Hey, you,” said a voice soft and insinuating behind him. “You’d better get those world-class buns back on the floor and start mixing with the clients.”

  Matt turned.

  A tall, grinning, buck-toothed man stood leering at him like a Renaissance devil.

  Matt didn’t have to say or do a thing.

  The man’s expression collapsed. “Sorry. I thought you were . . . sorry.”

  He whirled and left so fast that Matt wondered if he’d even recognize him again.

  Imagine Meeting You

  Here . . .

  Temple had been dying to remain glued to the orange leather sofa, interrogating Janice Flanders while pretending to make small talk.

  Why was Matt here, of all places? Because he was with Janice, obviously. Hadn’t Molina mentioned that he was seeing Janice? Temple couldn’t remember, but then so much had happened lately.

  “It’s been ages. Where have you been hiding yourself?”

  Speaking of small talk, Danny Dove expertly tossed it over his shoulder to Temple while weaving an elegant path through the crowds. He kept her hand in custody and therefore, Temple in tow.

  “Haven’t had any show-biz related projects lately,” Temple said. “I’ve never seen anybody cut a faster wake through a mob than this.”

  “Hate crowds, except onstage,” Danny explained, finally leading her into an Art Deco vignette that made her want to redo her whole place right away.

  “Here we are,” Danny said.

  And there was indeed a “we” here.

  A pudgy, short, red-faced man in a wrinkled, oatmeal-colored linen suit was gesticulating like a manic mime at a slim, tall man wearing a suit the same silky color and texture as Baileys Irish Cream.

  It was like watching Oliver Hardy berating Bond, James Bond, the Roger Moore incarnation.

  They turned, actors noticing an audience.

  “I’m done,” the short man said . . . shortly. He favored Temple with a particularly venomous look, then left.

  “Who is Grumpy, Dopey, and Pissed Off all put together?” Danny asked.

  “The manager of the whole enchilada,” the other man answered.

  He was one of those guys so dreamily handsome that the savvy woman figured out he was gay before she allowed her heart to skip a beat or her hormones to rev their engines.

  “This is my partner, Simon Foster,” Danny said. He drew Temple forward to introduce them with such beaming pleasure that each instantly knew the other was too important to dismiss on mere sexual preference grounds.

  Temple looked past the gorgeous suit, the hair, the eyes to a smart and slightly diffident personality.

  “You’re the crime-fighting PR woman,” Simon said.

  “Oh, Lord.” Temple laughed. “Danny’s been casting me in some musical in his mind again. Freelance PR Superwoman. It’s just that I sometimes run across crooks.”

  “Don’t we all?” Simon smiled and sighed at the same time.

  “What’s your gig?” Temple asked.

  “Gig? Isn’t she the little trouper?” Danny asked rhetorically. “Simon is an interior designer.”

  “I’ve been freelance until now,” Simon added. “The lure of Maylords was a regular paycheck, but I’ll still be able to work with my previous client list, and hopefully expand.”

  Temple read the underlying message obvious in both Janice and Simon’s presence on the staff of Maylords. Times were tough. The Clinton budget overage had morphed into the Bush megadeficit. Free spirits everywhere were hitching their stars to any steady job they could find.

  “Did you design this room?” Temple asked.

  When Simon nodded Temple shook her head in awe. “You’ve just convinced me to jettison my whole decor and go into deep debt.”

  “Maybe a little debt,” Simon answered. He glanced around, his laugh lines reversing course into a frown. “Gawd, that woman has been at my Erté prints again.”

  “Janice?” Temple asked.

  “Janice? Hardly. She’s got an eye Erté would’ve envied. It’s that Blanchard witch who thinks she’s curator-in-chief around here. Ignorant slut.”

  Simon exchanged the positions of two chrome-framed prints of elegantly attired women. The vignette gained a dynamic that had been missing before.

  Temple was startled to notice how much Simon resembled Matt when his back was turned, if Matt had ever been dressed or coifed spectacularly enough to turn heads.

  “Amateurs!” Danny shook out his French cuffs with a dancer’s disdainful grace. “Everybody’s an artist in his or her own mind, and/or a critic.”

  “It does sometimes seem the world of personalities veers between two poles,” Temple agreed, “the positives and the negatives.” She turned back to Simon. “It must be terrific fun to play with a string of fantasy rooms, like an ever-changing set design.”

  “Or a dollhouse for adults. I wanted to put mannequins into mine, but Ainsworth, the general manager you just saw leaving, nixed that. Each designer does two or three vignettes from scratch, but management has the final say. And sometimes would-be management, like large Miss Blanchard.” Simon frowned at the fall of a drape and adjusted it. “The rest of the room settings are fairly stock arrangements meant to showcase certain lines of furniture.”

  “Mannequins are a great idea!” Temple always waxed indignant to hear a creative notion quashed. “This is Las Vegas. Anything goes. Say . . . if ‘management’ found mannequins too hard-edged, how about soft-sculpture people? They’d be more subtle. Do I know a source for that!”

  Even Danny, who thrived on pushing real people around makebelieve settings, perked up at the suggestion. “Who’s your source? I could choreograph a fabulous number mixing soft-sculpture people with real dancers.”

  “My landlady at the Circle Ritz, Electra Lark, is the queen of creative soft-sculpture crowds. She fills the pews in her wedding chapel with them, even Elvis.”

  “The Circle Ritz!” Simon’s face lit up like Kleig lights spotlighting Fred Astaire in a ’30s musical. “What a post-Art Deco ’50s hoot! I love driving by that round building. And you live there?”

  “Me and my faithful feline companion, Midnight Louie. So does Matt Devine, who’s here tonight. Danny’s met him.”

  “Any openings?” Danny
asked, catching Circle Ritz fever. “We’d love a pied-à-terre closer to the Strip.”

  “Electra would know. I’ll check with her.” Temple was glad the subject of her cool digs had distracted Simon from the crushing of design ideas. This was Maylords’s opening night and her PR party. Everybody should be happy, at least for the evening.

  “I’d better mingle and make sure everything’s going well,” she said, suddenly sorry for lapsing into two personal conversations while on duty.

  She hurried back onto the pale cream travertine road, feeling a little like Dorothy en route to the wizard. She should ensure that the Maylords brass was happy with the event.

  Being congenitally short, despite the Midnight Louie black-cat heels sparkling on her feet, Temple searched for recognizable hair, feeling rather like a scalp hunter.

  Amelia Wong’s shiny black bob, with its intimations of ’20s femme fatale film stars like Louise Brooks, was a low-profile constant, a mobile, lacquered mushroom cap. Taller heads orbited her like heavenly bodies, some of them literally so, such as the equally statuesque blond Baylee and black Pritchard. Not to mention the X-Files alien-FBI types in opaque black shades.

  Mark Ainsworth, the dorky, unimaginative manager, had a greasy, curly poll of dishwater brown. Kenny, Maylords’s CEO, second generation and just past thirty, wore a Walter Mondale tonsorial chop job that screamed “midwestern” in a trendy international town like Las Vegas.

  Temple was so busy hunting hair she didn’t notice someone marking her out from the milling herd, although she was probably the only fast-moving person without a bent elbow holding a wineglass in the place.

  Temple’s eyes paged past a knot of people, then froze and paged back.

  Oh, vaulting Vladimir Kagans! That Iranian-secret-police guy in a navy suit fit for a funeral wearing a name tag reading “Joe.” That was someone she knew, who did not know her, thank God. What was C. R. Molina’s ex-squeeze Rafi Nadir doing here, and why was he passing as “Joe”?

  What was he ever doing anywhere? Security work to hear him tell it, a.k.a. stalking to anyone who knew what nasty crimes he was suspected of.