Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

''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.

Chapter 35

Midnight Louie's Icecapade

No doubt in some obscure scholarly circle a debate rages as to whether cat whiskers are susceptible to freezing.

I realize that this subject is abstruse in the extreme, but it so happens that I am in a unique position to present empirical data.

When I leaped into the back of the meat truck, it was my theory that refrigerated goods would be swiftly sent on their rounds, to avoid rotting in the hot sun. Apparently I underestimated the need for speed, what with modern refrigeration techniques.

The truck I have selected soon grinds into gear and rattles over what passes for road around Lake Mead. Not long after that it hits a smooth satin ribbon of asphalt and slips into high gear. I curl tightly into myself, husbanding enough warmth to generate a puddle of melted frost. Some, like that flaky Karma, would call it an aura. Others, like that hypercritical Caviar, would call it something far worse and more earthy, but I know the exact effect that produced this phenomenon. My own body heat is fighting the encroaching chill of the Big Sleep.

Above me, large and frozen-stiff pieces of dead meat swing to the rhythm of the road. I am keenly aware that my present condition, alive and sneezing, Is the exception to the rule around here. So I am most relieved when the truck stops after a few minutes and a good deal of gear-screeching.

I wait, my frozen joints instructed to bound toward the slightest slice of light through the vehicle doors.

No dice. Just Louie on ice.

I do not get it. Is this truck parked for the night, or what? Do they leave all this prime pork just hanging around? The hour can only be three or four o'clock in the afternoon. This meat should be on its way to all the restaurants in town. How has my usually infallible knowledge of human habits failed me?

More important, how long will it take for Midnight Louie to become frozen fillet of feline?

At last the truck body shudders as one of the beefy (excuse the expression) driver bounds into the seat up front. The motor vibrates to life, which massages my chronic shivers into something resembling apoplexy.

Then the vehicle jerks forward and we are moving again. But not me, personally. No, I believe that I am fast-frozen to the truck bed. Somehow the thought of Caviar taking the scenic route through north Lake Mead is no longer so amusing.

I am wondering if I will be preserved long enough to be thawed in a kinder, gentler century when something lances needlelike into the swollen pupils of my eyes. Perhaps I am being cloned for posterity.

No, my frozen orbs slowly contract. Light!

I leap, employing the memory of motion to propel me in one splendid vault to the door. I scream, as several body hairs adhere to the semi-frozen slush in which I was lying.