Cat In A Crimson Haze

Chapter 34

Girded for the Gridiron

Matt jerked down the sleeves of his black dinner jacket for the third time. He wasn't used to white cuffs showing.

He winced to glimpse himself in the makeshift mirror of Temple's French doors. Twilight's soft sable fog was pushing against them, so his rented suit vanished into the oncoming night. He looked like a dark-cloaked magician standing against the illusion of concealing black curtains, only his pale head, shirtfront and disembodied hands visible.

The black satin bow tie perched at his throat looked frivolous, even oddly sinister. It was such a different symbol from the plain notch of white linen he had been used to wearing.

Black tie was the last vestige of the peacock in modern male dress, and, ironically, also the closest thing to clerical garb.

He could hear Temple moving in the other room, the click of her heels telegraphing unread messages onto the hard tiled bathroom floor and then the bedroom's quieter walnut parquet.

She was late; she wasn't quite ready; she was as nervous as a barefoot cat on a batter-ready waffle iron.

In two hours the curtains would sweep back on the Las Vegas Gridiron show. Temple's sole, show-closing skit would be on the line, not to mention the others she had doctored at Danny Dove's invitation.

Matt had never glimpsed that opening-night edge in Temple before. It must date back to her amateur theater days, he mused, even to her time before the cameras when she had worked as a television news reporter.

Tonight she broadcast an air of energy and suppressed excitement that made him edgy. He remembered that Max Kinsella must have shared that singular exhilaration; that they had understood and suited each other very well; that he was a stranger, an uneasy intruder in an arena he hardly knew.

"Where on earth is Louie?"

Temple came trotting out from the bedroom, trying to screw a rhinestone dangle into her left ear.

"Not here. Nor is Caviar at home upstairs. Trouble?"

"Ouch! Oh, I'm all . . . thumbtacks . . . tonight! I seldom wear these blasted glitzy things. I can't find the hole."

"I didn't even know--notice--that you had pierced ears."

"It's this rusty mop. Distracts everyone."

"I'd help if I could." The Matt in the French doors lifted uncertain hands.

"Just look and tell me when I get the prong through."

Temple came over to present her earlobe, all the while jabbing at it like a mad jackhammer.

Matt squinted at the operation, then lifted his hands. "There Looks like a picture nail went through."

"Good." Temple slapped a tiny clip over the prong and smiled. She pulled a small chrome purse paved with rhinestones from under her elbow. "Hope I've got everything. I'm not used to Lilliputian evening bags . . . say, you look fabulous."

"You think so?" Matt pulled his sleeves down again. The shirt cuffs seemed wrong.

"Perfect." Temple pulled his cuffs up a half-inch. ''What about me? Anything off?"

He supposed married couples performed this mutual inspection ritual on evenings out, a thought that made him even more nervous.

"Perfect," he repeated for lack of originality, not so sure. Temple's gown was a slim, short beaded length of glittering silver--shapeless yet slinky, as liquid as a mercury fountain.

''How do you like my latest Stuart Weitzmans?" She turned to present him with a cocked, pale-hosed calf. "My first dressy high heels since I did a double axle down the Crystal Phoenix stairs."

Matt studied the mysteries of a black suede high-heeled pump with an ankle strap. Its gravity-defying, curved Brancusi sculpture of a steel heel was sheathed in white rhinestones.

"A masterpiece," he pronounced with confidence.

Temple sighed with edgy content. "Shall we go?"

Matt checked his watch, an inexpensive Timex that looked shoddy against the rented finery he had been advised to wear. "We're only twenty minutes late."

"I know!" Temple rushed to her door, then hesitated; she wasn't waiting for him to open it.

Her subtly made-up face fell. "Louie's been gone so much lately. Where can he be? It's not like him to desert me in my hour of need."

"You think the show is going to be that bad?"

"I don't know! I'm too close to it. You tell me after you've seen it. I don't think I can bear to watch."

Matt laughed and opened the door for her anyway.

*******************

Temple certainly knew how to prolong her misery.

Despite the delay, they had arrived at the Crystal Phoenix early enough for her to conduct an antsy tour of the stage's underbelly. She led Matt to a frill-free freight elevator that whisked them down a floor in silent, motionless magic. He couldn't help thinking of a magician's vanishing cabinet, which people entered to disappear and emerge from again on cue. Despite the elevator's impression that it had gone nowhere, the stainless steel doors slid open on vast warehouselike space, the antithesis of the meticulously decorated atmosphere above.

Matt was treated to more clicking heels on a hard surface-- concrete in this case--more pre-performance jitters and the sight of amateur chorines in exceedingly careless states of undress, which made his ears overheat. He had been an ordinary citizen for eight months now; when would he become blase about the simplest signals in a world that emphasized, rather than ignored, boy-girl interaction?

Of course Temple proudly introduced him to one and all; he was her date for the Big Night.

This was far more adult stuff than their pseudo-prom. Matt quickly found, disliking being on public parade. The women in the cast, her professional sisters, lifted their overdrawn stage eyebrows and cooed. The men eyed him with a touch of unspoken competition he found unnervingly new, and Danny Dove effused over him like he was the Second Coming.

"Isn't she wonderful, our Miss Temple! Nothing fazes her. And fast with a rewrite, let me tell you. What is your line?" Another appraising glance, underlined by a disconcerting glitter of appreciation. "Aren't you the cat's meow? Are you an actor?''

"No," Matt said. ''A shrink of sorts."

"Oooh. Better watch out. Miss Temple. He'll have you psychoanalyzed and on a couch in a second flat."

With a fanfare of bawdy laughter, Danny Dove bounded off on innerspring ankles to supervise a dozen different things.

"Danny is truly taken with you," Temple noted with amusement. "He's so protective of me that he usually glowers at my escorts like a Victorian father. The Fontana Brothers were subjected to a constant barrage of insults."

"He's . . . different."

"Well, he is gay, and if you weren't with me--"

"Oh, my God," said Matt, glimpsing yet another pitfall of the theatrical world.

"Don't worry. He'd never hustle a straight guy. But he can look. He's been really sweet to me, besides being the best director I've ever seen in action"

''Better than anyone at the Guthrie?" Matt asked in disbelief.

Temple thought. ''As good as, in a different milieu."

"Very different." Matt tried not to stare as a sylph attired only in glitter and a chiffon scarf darted across the hall from one dressing room to another, "You'd be surprised," Temple said, aware of his unease. "All theater people grow casual about the formalities. This stroll amongst our players should do you good. You've led a sheltered life."

"I know. But your dress is probably all the education I need at one time."

She stopped walking, surprised. "This? Glitzy Girl debutante stuff. It certainly doesn't show a lot of skin."

"But it . . . moves in a, an interesting way."

Temple quirked an eyebrow. "I'm impressed. You noticed. Poor Danny is doomed."

"It's not funny. I can't believe how oblivious I've been to so much. Is it any wonder that in seminary we never suspected sexual deviates among us? We were reared to be holy innocents."

"Now, instead of being wholly, you're just partly innocent," Temple said, "the best of both worlds. Everything's under control down here, as much as a backstage area ever is, and I see nothing that looks like Crawford Buchanan. Danny said yesterday that he had vanished into the wormhole from which he came."

"You don't sound properly relieved."

"No. Even if Crawford is sulking because the show is no longer all his, it would be like him to breeze in at the eleventh hour on performance night to claim all the credit. He may have an Alp of ego, but when it comes to honor, he is strictly in the molehill league. Come on, let's check out the house."

The same unnervingly smooth elevator transported them to the first floor. They threaded through the casino crowd until they reached a queue of people hedged into a line four-bodies-wide by emerald velvet ropes hung from Plexiglas-and-chrome posts.

Matt was beginning to understand Temple's enthusiasm for the Crystal Phoenix. It avoided the predictably posh cliche, such as red velvet ropes in brass stands, constantly reinventing itself and therefore the look of Las Vegas.

"Excuse me." Temple was blithely trotting outside the velvet boundary to the line's distant head, oblivious to proprietary frowns.

Matt followed in her wake, embarrassed. Good Catholic kids always took their turns in line, no matter how long.

She stopped so suddenly he collided with the beaded glass curtain of her back. Matt steadied her, and himself, by grabbing her upper arms. He hunted among a confusing array of unfamiliar faces for the source of her ankle-jolting pause.

Oh. There stood Carmen Molina, almost unrecognizable in a tall, floor-length column of maroon crepe and sequins from a decade that matched her age, beside a Frank Bucek.

''Lieutenant Molina!" Temple summoned a tone of arch surprise. ''I didn't recognize you without that ear thinga-ma-jiggy." Her agile fingers pantomimed a growth at the side of her head. ''What are you doing here?"

Molina's scant smile didn't bother stretching all the way to her eyes. "Not an occasion for flowers," she said. "I suspect the audience will more likely want to throw vegetables, uncooked.

I am a private citizen. I do go out now and then. And the Gridiron is an annual exercise in civic satire. I need to know how the script writers are depicting the police department, and if anything libelous is being said about anyone." She finished by nodding "hello" to Matt.

Matt realized that he was still clutching Temple like the hero on a grocery-store romance and loosened his hands. Injured ankle or not. Temple was securely mounted on her favorite high horse as well as her favorite high heels, and was in fine fettle.

"Agent Bucek," Temple acknowledged next. "I do hope that if the script police find anything actionable, they'll wait until the final curtain to make any arrests."

''Give us a break," Molina said blandly. ''We just want to see the show. I would say . . . break a leg, but that strikes a little too close to home.''

Temple laughed and sailed on, dragging Matt behind her.

At the azure-and-emerald carpeted steps leading to the Peacock Theater, Temple finally confronted a guardian in the form of a Crystal Phoenix security woman.

Temple snapped open the tiny metallic purse dangling from her shoulder on a fine chain to present two salmon-colored passes.

They were waved into the auditorium.

"Everybody is going to hate our guts," Matt suggested, sotto voce.

"I'll limp then, legitimately." Temple did just that as they disappeared into the theater.

"They'll feel so ashamed, begrudging a poor, disabled person her privileges. Oh, look! Isn't it gorgeous? Van and Chef Song have outdone themselves."

Matt surveyed the banquettes diminishing on a steeply raked aisle toward the shrouded stage. In the deliberately dimmed lights, the wine velvet seats glowed against black linen tablecloths set with gilt-edged white china. Dead center of each table a huge crystal brandy snifter held a pair of circling goldfish, their long, lacy fins and tails undulating through the limpid water.

Each setting, replayed by the dozens throughout the huge chamber, gave an impression of a continuum of exquisite and infinite beauty, of images repeated to the nth power in a fun-house of mirrors.

"Don't worry about skipping the line," Temple said. "All the VIPs coming tonight will be doing just that--the governor, the mayor, some mega-star performers." Temple thrust the salmon-pink tickets back in the metal bag swinging at her hip. "Danny gave me Crawford's show chairman set of tickets because he hasn't shown. Can you read the table signs? We're at number eight."

Noticing the white cards on their thin chrome stands, Matt scanned the numbers until he spotted the right one. He knew that Temple would die before donning her glasses in such a public setting.

''Down there." He pointed to a perilously distant banquette just right of stage center.

Temple sighed. ''A mercy that I'm solid on my pins again. These endless shallow stairs aren't made for walking on."

Matt, relieved to notice other people threading their way into the glamorous emptiness, wondered who the VIPs in their black ties and glittering gowns were, though any viewer of tabloid television probably could have told him.

''How much do the tickets for this cost, anyway?" he asked.

"One hundred and fifty dollars."

"Each?"

"Don't sound so shocked. A sit-down dinner for eight hundred, plus a show with a union tech crew and orchestra doesn't cost peanuts. And, remember, my set of tickets is free, thanks to cowardly Crawford."

Temple expertly eyed the angle to the stage, and then slid into the banquette. Matt edged in after her and exchanged stares with the serenely gliding fish.

"Do you think that's why Buchanan isn't here?" he asked. "He expects something bad to happen?"

"Probably." Temple cracked open her purse and snapped the tickets down, like aces in the hole, above each of their plates. "Doesn't mean it will. In fact, Crawford not being here guarantees that nothing bad can happen, Crawford himself being the worst thing that could happen."

"Your logic leaves a lot to be desired."

"Thank you. Now. Have you ever seen a Gridiron show before? Of course not. I should warn you. Situations and dialogue can get a tad naughty."

"I see."

"Oh, nothing as crude and rude as years ago when the Gridiron was a men-only show."

She picked up the white program brochure at her place setting. "Too bad they had already printed C.B.'s name as show chairman. All he did was make extra work for everybody else."

Matt studied the inside of his brochure: dinner menu on the left and satirical bill of fare on the right, skit by skit. Writers were listed without indicating which skit they wrote. Lo, Crawford Buchanan's name led all the rest--not that there were many, just Temple-and two others.

Murmuring voices were filling the house with a buzz of anticipation. Waiters that remarkably resembled Matt in dress and demeanor darted about the languid scene like penguin-fish, taking drink orders.

"Won't it be hard to eat and applaud at the same time?*' he wondered aloud, as two other couples settled into their banquette from the left.

"The show won't start until desert is cleared," Temple said. "No scraping forks to interfere.

Except for the celebrity cameos, the cast is amateur, most of them newsies. Their fragile stage presence would shatter if they had-to fight a filet mignon for the audience's attention."

As the one person present with the least to lose, being neither the perpetrator nor the subject of a Gridiron skit, Matt settled back to enjoy dinner and the panorama of the audience.

He had to admire the waiters' deft ballet. Once the preset salads were eaten, the glass plates were floated away and a dinner plate of fish fillet, steamed squash, peppers and broiled, tomatoes was presented to each diner.

Temple eyed the generous whitefish fillet, then glanced at the goldfish pirouetting in their glass globe. "What a pity Louie isn't here. He would adore the ambiance. I don't understand it.

He's been hanging around the Crystal Phoenix all week and now--just when things get interesting--he's gone."

"What interests a cat differs from what intrigues a human being," Matt noted, squeezing a lemon slice onto his entree.

The during-dinner chatter increased in noise level as the liquor flowed and the waiters whisked. Dessert was a black-and-white slice of chocolate-and-cream-cheese pie. Temple tried to pass her portion to Matt, claiming pre-show nerves and a diet.

"This is rich enough to have its own secret bank account in Switzerland," she complained.

"No wonder the Swiss are famous for chocolate. No?"

She watched a trifle wistfully as the waiter wafted away her untouched dessert plate.

At last every table was cleared except for wine and low-ball glasses. Temple nursed a white wine spritzer and Matt had called for coffee. By this hour he had usually had consumed two cups from ConTact's huge communal pot.

Orchestration swelled from the stage lip, hushing chattering voices and clinking glasses. A show-tune medley blared with brass. Matt leaned forward to view the orchestra and saw none.

Then heads hairy and bald began elevating into view, baton and bows waving, brass blasting.

"The whole orchestra pit is an elevator," Temple bent near to explain in a stage whisper.

Matt nodded. He remembered her saying the Peacock Theater's stage had all the latest equipment. He wondered if she knew because she had researched the hotel, or because the Mystifying Max might have performed here once.

The thought was unsettling. He concentrated instead on Temple's fretting about the missing Midnight Louie. Caviar had been AWOL a lot lately, too.

Could the cats' absent ways be related?

No. Cats walked alone, according to Kipling, and liked to wander. Matt momentarily envied their freedom. He would rather be with Caviar and Midnight Louie, wherever they were, than sitting here in rented formalwear about to see an elaborate but mainly amateur show.

Besides, he thought, running a finger under the newly irritating starched white cotton at his neck, with all these people in the theater, he was getting fairly hot under the collar.