Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Her aunt Kit’s dramatic contralto boomed into the room like a bolt of energy. “Thanks for the fix-up date. What a morning after! I felt like Judy Garland in the production number of ‘Get Happy.’ Remember that one? Judy in fedora and legs and black-tie jacket, borne aloft at the end by rows of chorus boys?

“As chorus boys go, the Fontana Brothers are the cat’s pajamas, all nine of ’em. Does that have anything to do with lives? Unfortunately, not mine. One can’t have everything all at once. Listen, my dear. I’d love to spend some time with you. I’m not needed in New York for ages. Well, a week or two. No bloody book deadline. I’m at the aging Oasis where the damn reality TV show put us poor judges up. Can we get together?”

Temple laughed at the message until she cried a little. (Scarlett O’Hara wake-up moments had a very bad effect on one.) Aunt Kit. Her Midwestern mother’s never-married sister, an actress turned novelist. In the old days, she would have officially been designated “spinster,” (kinda what Temple did for a living now, media wise). But Aunt Kit was the only woman in Temple’s family who’d gone somewhere and done something . . . adventurous.

Yes, they could get together!

Temple dialed the number Kit left and suggested that her aunt might want to do Vegas with a transplanted native and maybe bunk with her for a while.

When Temple hung up, she cringed. What a coward! Aunt Kit in residence would keep both Matt and Max at bay while Temple tried to adjust to her brave new role as a woman with two equally appealing beaux: playgirl of the Western world.

Eat Till You Drop

“Are you ready?” Randy asked the next day at the New Millennium.

He looked almost as quizzical as Danny Dove, Temple’s choreographer friend, at his most frantic or antic. She should be ready for anything, on the work front at least.

Aunt Kit had been installed that morning in Temple’s humble home-away-from-Manhattan and was left to her own devices. Why did Temple think those started with the initial F? Rule, Fontanas, Fontanas rule the Strip. Their ladies never, ever will be anything but hip.

Temple regarded the hotel’s deserted, gray flannel–upholstered media room, wishing she and Randy could sit here forever, playing tiddlywinks and video games with art and commerce.

“Ready for what, Randy?”

“Lunch with the Bigwigs.”

“Why do I think that title is capitalized?”

“Because it is. Today. Russia is no longer a Red State, excuse the expression.”

“Politics,” Temple said. “Damned if you don’t play politics, damned if you do.”

“This exhibition is a touchy blend of Russians Red and White. Ready to walk the tightrope?”

Temple thought about walking her own personal tightrope between two guys and a gal: Max. And Matt. And C. R. Molina, the interfering homicide lieutenant. Guess which one was the gal? If you could call it that.

“Tightrope walking? What,” she asked Randy, “do you think a self-respecting freelance PR person in Las Vegas has been doing all these years?”

“Excellent. We’ll be lunching in the Red Planetarium Room.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

Temple seriously wished for her natural red hair back when she sat down to lunch in the Red Planetarium Room fifty stories above the Strip.

The restaurant revolved, of course. In a city dominated by mini-me skyscrapers like the Eiffel Tower and the New York, New York faux skyline, real elevation was a turn-on. The ceiling was a slowly spinning electrified night sky as seen from Mars, with Earth a mar-bleized blue-and-white beach ball dominating the distant glittering galaxies.

Larger-than-life-size Greek-style nude statues in red marble depicted Mars, the Roman god of war, and his Greek counterpart, Ares. Not to mention several naked unnamed goddesses. The room was awash in red velvet and stainless steel.

Although the rococo decor befit the last Romanov czars of Russia, the dominating red color scheme was a slap in the cool white-marble faces of White Russians, the aristocracy ushered out of the mother country so violently by the “Red” Communist Revolution in the early twentieth century.

At least the tablecloths were whiter than the snow-capped Ural Mountains separating expansive European Mother Russia from equally sprawling Siberia and Asia. At a huge round table curled into the tufted shell of a crimson velvet banquette sat a coven of strangers, eight, from Temple’s hasty summation.

Let the introductions begin! Shortly thereafter, she concluded: too bad the table was surrounded by the most dyspeptic mugs on the planet.