Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 2

Phoning Home

Temple yawned. It was only midmorning, but Midnight Louie had been thrashing about half the night, giving her dreams of being entangled by a giant furry black octopus.

The cat who deigned to live with her, a solid black, solid twenty-pound guy with a knack for showing up where needed, thumped atop her desk. Midnight Louie nosed her business cards aside to sprawl belly-down on the cool surface.

She eyed the smartphone on her desk as if it were a particularly large insect despite the serene graphic of nearby Red Rock Canyon on the home screen. She’d donned her headset because she expected this long-put-off call to last awhile. She didn’t want to fry her brain … or her ear, which was already hot, and probably red. Her fingertips on the desktop were white. And cold.

Honestly!

Her gaze lingered on a pile of her business cards: TEMPLE BARR, PR.

Why was she indulging in cold feet now? She’d once done live stand-ups as a TV reporter, had repped a prestigious repertory theater where she ran into movie stars, for gosh sakes. She’d been a public relations freelancer in super-hyped, larger-than-life Las Vegas for more than two years. She was smart, single, successful, and had even developed a reputation as an amateur sleuth to the point that a homicide lieutenant had actually called upon her services a time or two.

If Oprah Winfrey—or Larry the Cable Guy, for gosh sakes—called right now, Temple could do an instant interview with either one. Or both at a time. She was a media maven and she’d had eluded murderers attempting to flame-roast her in a burning room only recently. Well, one murderer.

So why did she find phoning home so intimidating? Temple would be thirty-one in a couple of months. Past thirty and way past the age of consent.

Louie bent over to apparently study the cell phone screen displaying her “Family” contacts. One big black paw patted it.

“No claws,” she warned, her hand snatching up the phone to safety.

Louie backed away, lifting a forepaw innocent of claw tips.

“Sorry, boy. I’m a little nervous.”

Just do it, Temple told herself.

Temple tapped the familiar number in Minneapolis and waited for the ring. On Saturday her father and brothers would be off doing man things, like attending her nephews’ and nieces’ soccer games, performing strange rituals with their heads buried in vehicle motors, and sitting in battered wooden motorboats on lakes, pestering fish while mosquitoes pestered them.

Karen Barr should be home alone now, maybe doing accounts for her antique mall stand or … baking oatmeal-raisin cookies. Temple had such a sudden craving for those warm, homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies, her stomach spasmed and her mouth watered.

These autonomic system flare-ups were ridiculous. She called home every few weeks, but … But she hadn’t been back to visit since coming to Las Vegas.

“Temple,” her mother’s voice hummed into her overheated ear. “I thought that might be you.”

“Hi, Mom. How are you all doing?”

“Fine. The weather is warming up, so all the boys are out. We had hardly any snow this winter.”

“I never thought global warming would hit Minnesota.”

“So what’s new in your world? Triple-digit heat numbers yet?”

“Not yet. Luckily, you don’t have to shovel sweat. And it’s a dry heat in this climate.”

“I guess there’s no prying you out of Sin City.”

Good. Her mom had given Temple an out from this awkward conversation.

“There probably is, Mom,” she said. “I was thinking about coming up.”

“That’s wonderful! Any special reason?”

“One.”

“You’re not changing jobs?”

“Nooo…” Temple could have said she was changing boyfriends, but she knew better than to drop the fiancé bomb right away. “I do have someone I want you to meet.”

“Someone?” Her mother’s voice was suddenly guarded. “Kit said you were the social butterfly of the Strip.”

“What? Kit said that? When did you talk to Aunt Kit?”

“A lot of times. Temple. We are sisters.”

“So you two talk about me?”

“Sometimes.”

“And?”

“She said you’d really settled into that over-the-top city. That you had some key clients and a lot of friends. She particularly mentioned a big Italian family named Fontana that had given you a lot of PR commissions. I was so glad to hear that.”

Oh, Aunt Kit, you devil you. Her mother was imagining a “Mamma Mia knows best” clan when the sophisticated Fontanas were Vegas venue owners and more like the Sopranos, but in a good way.

Obviously, Kit hadn’t mentioned she herself had recently married the eldest of the mob of dreamy Fontana brothers. Their dark Italian good looks, attired in pale Ermenegildo Zegna designer suits, had become a Vegas brand for smooth, single, and sexy.

Temple understood why her aunt had kept mum with Karen. Kit had been a New York City single until sixty and then had married a younger man. Aldo Fontana was a much younger man. If Temple didn’t have her own guy, she’d consider her aunt an ideal role model.

“Well, I’m used to having big brothers,” Temple said, thinking of her hulking outdoorsy four, “and there are ten Fontana brothers.”

“Mamma mia. Those Italians do reproduce! But I’m glad you still have ‘older brothers’ to take you under their wings.”

“Sometimes, Mom. I take them under my wing.”

Sometimes family couldn’t see you as independent and grown up, particularly if you were the youngest and only daughter of five.

“Say, speaking of big families,” Temple said, “I never did find out why you and Dad had so many of us. A little out of step with the ‘small footprint’ philosophy of the times, although I’ve seen my birth footprint and it was tiny.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I suppose it was because we really wanted a daughter.”

“You mean you were holding out for a girl the way families always used to hold out for a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Way more liberated of you than I suspected, Mom.”

“Thank you. I think. So who is this someone you want us to meet?”

“Well, duh. My fiancé.”

A really long pause. The family had met Max, but had not been so enamored as Temple. No one could have been as enamored as much as Temple at that point, but her family would have resented anyone who’d take her out of the Twin Cities, especially to someplace as glitzy as Vegas.

“So it’s not that magician?” I suggested cautiously.

“His name is Max.”

“‘Is’?”

“Well, sure. He’s still alive and well”—just barely—“in Las Vegas.”

“So there’s someone new?”

Somehow that made Temple sound fickle. “Not so new. He lives here at the Circle Ritz too.”

“I always think of a Western movie when I hear that name for your apartment building.”

“Condo. I’m building equity.”

“So it’s over with … the magician?”

Temple smiled, sure that epithet for Max had originated with her dad. There was nothing Midwestern about Max except his origins, and that was an unforgivable strike against him in stable Minnesota.

“Pretty much.”

“Not totally?”

“Yes, totally.”

“So who will we be meeting?”

“His name is Matt. He’s a couple years older than I am. He works in the communications business.”

“That seems a good compatibility factor. Where is he from?”

“Chicago.” The capital of the upper Midwest.

“Oh,” This time the “oh” was stretched out on a rising scale of approval. For gosh sakes again, Max had been born in Wisconsin. Everybody was practically neighbors.

“Yes,” Temple said. “We were just in Chicago to get together with his family.”

“You were that close and you didn’t swing up here?”

“Matt’s job makes longer trips impossible.”

“What is his job?”

“Radio.”

“A disappearing medium, isn’t it?”

“Not for Matt. He’s syndicated.”

“So when can you and this Matt come up?”

“In the next few weeks. I’m checking to see about family vacations.”

“Your brothers go camping now and again in the summer. It’d be easier if you set a date and we go from there.”

“I don’t want to interfere with any expeditions.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t. The boys wouldn’t miss meeting the new guy.”

Temple rolled her eyes. She bet they wouldn’t. They’d always had to hassle her dates from junior high on. One thing about Max. Nobody hassled him. They could try, but it never worked.

“It would be a quick trip,” she warned. “Matt works nights.”

“Not another one! Sorry. It’s your business. I was just … surprised.”

“Gosh, Mom. This is Vegas. It’s such a twenty-four-hour town, it has its own time zone.”

“Seriously?”

“No, just exaggerating for effect. I do that a lot in my job. So, we’re good. I’ll check with Matt and we’ll figure a time to visit that works for you all.”

“Fine, but … wait.”

“Yes?”

“What’s the young man’s last name?”

“Want to check him out on Facebook, Mom?” Temple teased.

“I don’t much go on there.”

Temple smiled. It was a miracle that her mother was familiar with social media at all.

“It’s Devine.”

“I’m sure you think everything about him is, dear.”

“Of course, but that’s the last name.”

“Devine?” This pause was the longest yet. “Not the Matt Devine.”

“Well, he is to me.”

“Temple, don’t be coy. You’re not really with that darling guy from the Amanda Show?”

Temple wanted to close her eyes but Louie reached up to pat her cheek with a velvet paw.

“If you say so, Mom.”

“Temple, honey, that’s amazing news! I don’t know why you are so closemouthed about what’s going on with you.”

Try four teasing, overprotective older brothers, Mom.

“I love the show. But isn’t he an ex-priest?”

“I thought Universal Universalists were open-minded.”

“Of course we are, but I have to wonder if it’s some kind of rebellion thing that you’d go for an ex-clergyman.”

“I passed the age of rebellion over a decade ago, Mom. He’s just a great guy to me, and the only issue with us now is, are we going to get married in Vegas, Chicago, or Minneapolis?”

“That serious?”

Louie leaned his intrusive black nose close to the cell phone as Karen Barr’s deep audible intake of breath wafted into Temple’s ear.

“Not serious. Exciting, happy, wonderful,” Temple told her mother.

“Yes! Yes, of course. But, dear, it’ll have to be a church wedding, and I don’t know that Las Vegas is quite the venue for that.”

“Are you kidding? There are more churches in Vegas than in most U.S. cities. Anyway, I’m not coming up to church-hunt, just to give you all a chance to meet my fiancé.”

“It’s great news, honey. We love you and can’t wait to see you.”

“Same here, Mom.”

Mumbled good-byes ended the call.

Temple slumped in her ergonomic chair.

Midnight Louie lifted a lazy forepaw to bat at the wires as she returned her headphone to its usual position on her desk, curling the wires into a less tempting mass.

She took a deep breath of her own, then released it slowly. “Well, that’s done,” she told Louie. “You’re lucky cats don’t have families and civil and religious ceremonies. Mom’s right. We’ll have to come up with a geographical site and an ecumenical ceremony. No matter what, I am going to get one gorgeous over-the-top white bridal gown to do it in.”

Temple dried her damp palms on her knit shorts and pushed herself to her feet.

Her spirits lifted with her first step back into the living area. She detoured to the kitchen to make herself a peanut butter sandwich, Louie at her heels and then up on the countertop. Louie was the Royal Sniffer, and the Royal Taster if he liked the sniff. He always smelled her food, but usually turned his nose and whiskers away in distaste.

Temple then went to cast herself down on the living room sofa. She pulled the Review-Journal sections across the coffee table to browse. Now that the May weather was growing hotter for the summer, Louie turned himself around by her side, twice, and cuddled up close.

His big furry body was going to get too hot to cuddle with soon, and she’d already had her sweat shop experience for the day.

A small headline below the newspaper’s first section fold caught her eye:

UFOS AHOY ON THE STRIP

“As if my call to Minnesota wasn’t totally ‘phone home, E.T.,’” she mumbled to Louie, munching crunchy peanut butter. He perked a gentlemanly ear. Thank goodness cats didn’t object to talking with one’s mouth full. “Now Vegas is getting all spooked.”

The article made much of a few tourists freaked out by low-flying UFOs they claimed to have spotted hovering over the Strip. Temple shook her head as she read of the darting round “ships” with a broad row of lights beaming a glow around the middle. Probably two Frisbees glued together. People will hallucinate anything, she thought. With all the exotic outdoor lighting in Sin City, a fleet of genuine flying saucers could land and probably be taken for a new restaurant’s advertising gimmick. How would she engineer the effect?

With those silver flattened helium balloons, Temple thought, and a pulsing LED readout like the famous Times Square electronic billboard around the middle. That would work. Hey, the marketers behind this rumor had already scored newspaper ink and even a link to a site where people were mounting camcorder footage and cell phone photos of the phenomena.

And here Temple thought she’d been wandering through her own personal Twilight Zone already this afternoon. Still, inquiring minds wanted to know. Temple picked up her iPad and checked the sighting Web site just to laugh at what people will believe.

The usual jerky videos were fuzzy like all phony UFO footage, but she saw enough to get a sit-up-and-drop-your-jaw moment.

Anyone with a long memory or a thorough grounding in Las Vegas history would recognize this particular model of levitating saucer. The design was crude, the look was hokey, but this shape was not alien to Las Vegas at all.

In that case, maybe the UFOs weren’t an alien visitation but more on the order of a haunting.

Someone should look into this.

She was sure someone would.

Temple tossed the newspaper section on the coffee table and went to relieve anticipated family stress by making another peanut butter sandwich, this one with bacon.

Imitating Elvis’s eating habits was as weird as she wanted to get just now.

She had a forthcoming meeting that would make a call home to Mom look like a grammar school cakewalk.