Cat In An Aqua Storm

2

A Crummy Encounter

“I can’t believe the nerve of that man.” The tall blonde drowned her complaint in a swallow of white wine spritzer, the PR woman’s national drink.

“Who?” Temple, looking around sharply with news-hound instincts, saw only women gathered in cocktail-party knots.

The blonde’s name tag said she was Sunny Cadeaux. She turned away from the two other women in her schmoozing circle to spit out two loathsomely familiar words: “Crawford Buchanan.”

“Oh.” Temple quickly sipped her Virgin Mary while trying to dodge the leafy stick of celery afloat in the blood-colored beverage. “Awful Crawford. What’s he done now?”

“You must have come in the back way,” Sunny suggested.

Temple nodded. “I was late, and I wanted to talk to the hotel manager.”

“Why? Are you on the arrangements committee? If so, I must say that we love meeting at the Crystal Phoenix, but I wish you’d rearrange Crawford Buchanan permanently.”

“Sorry. I’m not on that committee or any other one.” Temple finally decided to remove the bobbing stalk and eat it. She couldn’t get near the buffet table anyway, she concluded, eyeing the horde of feasting PR types swarming it. All queens, not a drone in the bunch.

“What were you talking to Van von Rhine about?” Sunny persisted. PR people were insatiably curious for the story behind the story.

“About a pussycat.”

“Pussycat?” parroted a lady in Sally Jesse Raphael-red glasses, leaning around Sunny.

“Well, more of a tomcat,” Temple admitted. “Midnight Louie was the house cat here until he wandered to my neck of the woods. I just wanted Van to know that he was all right. She and her husband Nicky Fontana took an interest in him.” Temple frowned. “At least I think he’s all right. He wouldn’t touch his Free-to-Be-Feline all afternoon.”

“Midnight Louie. Is that the ABA killer cat?”

Temple couldn’t quite read the woman’s name tag from where she stood. She often skipped wearing her glasses at social events. That meant that she got potluck from menus and met a lot of Petsys and Cerols, not to mention Jams and Retes at coed affairs. This lady appeared to be named “Nike.”

“Midnight Louie got the publicity for finding the body,” Temple explained. “He didn’t kill a thing at the ABA but time.”

“I wish he was here and would do away with Crawford Buchanan,” Sunny suggested between her teeth in a tone that did not live up to her name.

“What has he done that’s so horrible now?” Temple wondered.

“Check out the ballroom entrance foyer. There ought to be a law.”

“Crawford’s nature is to be awful,” Temple quipped, “not lawful, but I can’t resist seeing what God’s gift to PR women is up to.”

She set down her untouched Virgin Mary, sans celery, and glided through the crowd with the agile expertise of one whose business is going places fast without ruffling anyone.

En route she couldn’t help but wish that she had been on the arrangements committee. The ballroom was papered with a gilt-stamped motif of either Asian phoenixes or fireworks—without glasses she couldn’t quite be sure which—that shone softly in the dazzle from the overhead chandeliers. The lavish picture-frame paneling painted the color of vanilla ice reminded Temple of a French chateau. Taste. Elegance. Refinement. In a Las Vegas world overdosed on shallow glitter, the Crystal Phoenix stood alone, an island of restraint afloat in a blitz of glitz and crass commercialism.

Speaking of which... Temple passed through the double ballroom doors, stopping so fast and hard that her Christian Dior black satin spikes threatened to drive through the carpet backing.

Crawford Buchanan sat at a table draped in peach linen and piled with the black-and-white proof of his journalism credentials, the latest edition of the Las Vegas Scoop. A silver candelabra flickered at one elbow, its light playing over the matching silver of his hair—no longer frizzed into a permanent Brillo pad, but worn long and slicked back with mousse until it ended with a froth of trendy curls at his jacket collar.

“Ugh,” Temple muttered.

“If you don’t like the spokesman, wait’ll you see the product.” The woman who had materialized beside her smiled grimly. This one she recognized: Sylvia Cummins, WICA vice president, ran PR for the Crystal Phoenix.

“What’s he doing here?”

“Cutting into our pie,” Sylvia said. “You notice the sign?”

“No—oh, pinned to the tablecloth. Uh. ‘Cooties We Cherish’?”

“Better dig out the glasses, Temple, you don’t want to miss this one,” Sylvia advised under her breath as she brushed past to return to the ballroom.

Temple pawed in her gold evening tote bag until she felt the soft padded form of her glasses case. By the time she donned them, the last arrivals had dispersed. Only she and Crawford occupied the foyer.

Total tastelessness. Vulgarity. Crudity. It all sat enthroned in Buchanan’s little corner of the world. Temple walked over, glaring as she deciphered the offending sign. Cookies with Crawford, it read. Might as well advertise RUSSION TEA WITH RASPUTIN.

“Have you sunk to crashing WICA meetings now?” she greeted him.

“Hey, it’s a free foyer.”

She studied his handout flyers advertising Crawford Buchanan & Associates Public Relations. “I didn’t know you had any associates but fleas.”

“Temper, temper, T.B.,” he cautioned, unruffled. That was the most annoying thing about Crawford, he was not insultable.

“Women in Communications Association means just that. I haven’t noticed you having any sex-change operations lately. I should ask Van von Rhine to toss you out.”

He smirked. “At least you noticed. And try to eject me. I’ll sue WICA for being a female-chauvinist organization quashing free enterprise by the opposite sex.”

“The only thing worth tossing at your table is the cookies.” She eyed the large brown circles, whose pink icing clashed with the peach tablecloth. “How can you do an objective job of public relations for anybody when you’re writing a column for the Las Vegas Poop? That’s gilt-edged conflict of interest. You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

“Thanks. That’s what you PR girls are missing out on. All your hen parties won’t make up for some self-interested enterprise. This column”—he picked up the inky tabloid, his thumb under a front-page column titled “Buchanan’s Broadside”—“gets me lot of attention and more business. Got the stripper competition at the Goliath because of it. That’s worth a lot of money and contacts.”

“I’ve got news for you. They asked me to handle it first.”

“I turned it down.”

“Why the hell would you do that, T.B.?” Buchanan seemed genuinely shocked, his big melting brown eyes wet as fresh-baked chocolate chips. “That’s self-employment suicide! Broads, glitter, bodies—a baby could get A-one news coverage on an event like that without dampening a diaper.”

Temple sighed. “If the word ‘ethics’ doesn’t mean anything to you, I don’t imagine the word ‘exploitation’ would either.”

“These stripper babes aren’t exploited. They love the attention, take it from me. The stripper guys may be a little bent, and I’m not too crazy about spending time around them, but—”

“Crawford, you are too Neanderthal for words. Your attitudes toward women and gays are going to get you tarred and feathered someday.”

“You sound like those hatchet-faced dames picketing the competition.”

“Have you checked their signs? Maybe they’re just picketing you.”

Before he could answer with his usual amused calm, Temple turned on her heel, literally, and marched away. She stopped inside the ballroom doors, unsoothed by the civilized surroundings, briefly regretting the lucrative assignment Crawford was handling with all the sensitivity of a number fifteen sandpaper. She could have used the money even before Midnight Louie had turned up in her life.

But money wasn’t everything, Temple told herself, or she’d be a high-paid stripper and someone else could be a struggling PR free-lancer. Maybe that was why she had a headache. She sipped her Virgin Mary down to the melting ice cubes, and left.