Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"The Gridiron? I thought you were the whole show this year."

"The deadline's in two days, and I can't come up with enough skits. You churn out this lightweight fluff like it was pulling cotton candy."

"You were planning on mounting something heavy like Eugene O'Neill for the Gridiron?" she suggested tartly.

''You know what I mean. I need a cute, satirical touch.''

"By when?"

''Rehearsals start Monday night."

"Galloping Gridiron, Buchanan, that's damn short notice. If you hadn't have tried to hog the whole thing, you wouldn't be in a pickle in addition to your regular crock. I should let you stew in your own vinegar."

"I know, I know! I thought I could do it and then . . . my heart's been acting up."

"Putting on shows is a high-pressure gig. You should know that too."

"At least I know who to call when I'm in a jam," he put in with sly flattery and his deepest baritone.

"Who else have you put the squeeze on at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning?"

"No one," he admitted sheepishly. "Just you. I need a big closing number for the whole cast.

Something that says it all for Las Vegas this year. Danny Dove, the so-called director, says the show is cooked if we don't get the right closer."

How sweet it is. Temple thought, idly uncoiling her long red telephone cord with her long, freshly lacquered crimson fingernails. Should she leave Crawford twisting slowly in the wind--

she wound a length of cord around her forefinger, tight--or bail the dastard out?

"All right, but it's only for the good of the Gridiron. I could not care less if they opened and closed the show with a literal roast of you. I'll work up something this weekend and fax it to you Monday."

"No, no. You need to come down to my office at the Scoop to write it so we can . . . consult, if necessary. No one's in today, so there are plenty of available computers. I'll be here all day, and tomorrow too."

"You really think that I have nothing better to do than hang out with you all weekend?"

"We really need that number," he said.

"All right," she grumbled, hanging up without saying "goodbye." Unfortunately, she would be saying ''hello" to Crawford all too soon.

The Las Vegas Scoop office was about as reassuring as a floating crap game site.

Temple had driven past it often enough, never failing to wrinkle her nose when she thought of Crawford Buchanan toiling here night after night like some pale-bellied black spider with soft furry legs--no, that comparison was unfair to spiders.

Temple considered herself open-minded, but she hated his daily *'Buchanan's Broadside"

column, and its leering tours of the lowest nightlife in Vegas. She hated the Las Vegas Scoop , a finger-smudging tabloid, dirty in more ways than one with its tawdry, full-page photos of

''escort" boys and girls, including private dancers of every sexual persuasion from vichyssoise to Brazil nuts.

Temple parked her freshly washed Storm in front of a sidewalk littered with dead sporting event stubs and the aforesaid escorts' faces wearing the imprint of size twelve shoes. Standing before the Las Vegas Scoop's narrow, almost clandestine doorway, she hated to touch the scratched doorknob.' The place reminded her of a porno movie theater; you always wondered who had been here, fingering what with what.

"I must be insane," she muttered.

But she did write a heck of a production number, and how nice to have Crawford come crawling to her for rescue, not that crawling was such an alien occupation for him!

The grimy front door was locked. Oh, great.

Temple jammed on her red-framed sunglasses again and glanced back at her car. She hated working away from her home office anyway, although she prided herself on versatility. Mostly, she hated collaborating. She who writes best, writes alone. Having Crawford close enough to collaborate with was not a happy thought.

The door opened and there he was, not wearing the usual pale, prissily tailored suit, which gave the Fontana brothers' signature look a bad name.

Crawford Buchanan wearing a pineapple-yellow knit shirt and--ugh!--white Bermuda shorts was a sight to make even sunglass-shaded eyes sore. Apparently equating him with a furry-legged spider had been eerily on target, Temple observed with a quick, distasteful downward glance.

'*You look . . . perky today, T.B.," was Buchanan's smarmy opener.

''Show me to the computers,'' Temple growled, brushing past him without brushing anything else obnoxious, such as a fingerprint-smudged doorjamb. One never knew when the police might require physical evidence.

The place was deserted, as advertised. For a moment Temple wondered if Crawford was going to try anything funny, anything funny being an unwanted pass, either verbal or physical.

He fancied himself a ladies' man, and no number of acid put-downs could disabuse his bottomless ego of the notion.

''We can work in my office," he said, turning to wend through a room crowded with desks, computer terminals, dismembered Las Vegas Scoops, overflowing aluminum ashtrays, and empty styrofoam coffee cups that looked as if they had all suffered the runs. The only thing missing was a disheveled dead body.

Temple inhaled stale cigarette smoke--and the super-sweet reek of more than one cheap cigar--deeply regretting the moment she had answered her kicky red phone to begin this descent into journalistic hell.

"You have an office?" she asked hopefully. Crawford himself was at least clean to the point of fussiness. It had to be better there.

"Sure," his deep, disc-jockey voice said cockily. "I'm a key columnist for the Scoop ," The office even had a door on it, apparently another perk for a Scoop employee.

Temple edged inside, making sure her swollen tote bag never brushed the door frame. The furnishings were old, but dusted. Everything was organized, down to the two computers sitting back to back on the desk.

Temple raised a fire-engine-red eyebrow.

Crawford's shrug only demonstrated how much nature had shorted him on shoulders. "I moved another computer in here so we could consult. And I figured you could do without inhaling the cigarette halitosis of the city room."

" Thank you," Temple said, eyeing a neat pile of bond paper. "Are those the scripts for the show?"

Crawford nodded.

''Are they any good?"

"I wrote them all," he answered with irritation.

"That's why I asked."

Temple swung her tote bag onto a vacant folding chair. Let Buchanan try anything and he'd learn what self-defense tactics Matt Devine had taught her in the past few weeks. Plus, she was in group therapy. She was no pushover, despite looking no larger than a Munchkin.

''I don't know why I have to work here," she complained, pushing the power-on button and watching the computer screen perform its usual opening routine, while she fretted about the forthcoming task.

Come up with an instant closing number for the Gridiron ... what topics were worth shish-kebabbing this year in particular? Las Vegas's usual hyperactive civic bloat offered a surfeit of suitably large targets.

"Just work away and don't mind me," Crawford suggested with a simper from his perch on the desk edge. "Nice shoes, T.B."

Temple glanced up. He was eyeing her legs, not her shoes. Make that drooling. Surely her conservative beige Van Elis, the businesswoman's basic dress heel, wouldn't merit much notice.

Crawford begged to differ.

"I do like those hooker shoes."

"These are not hooker shoes!-Hooker shoes have heels four inches tall and are trashy. And cheap. These designer pumps will pump three inches of iron spike into your shin if you don't sit down and stick to business, whatever it is the sole author of the Gridiron does when he's short of scripts and begs for help."