Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

"And I was right," says his companion. "Elvis is not dead, but kidnapped by aliens. They have cloned him and been performing liposuction at a secret government laboratory under Nellis Air Force Base. See for yourself."

She points with a broad stage gesture. Two chorines stop ball-changing long enough to whisk the UFO door open and proudly stand at attention on either side.

Out pours (and I do mean pours) a plethora of Elvii. They leap to the stage and their knees and begin singing "Heartbreak Hotel."

"I told you the mob is behind the alien takeover," claims the Chamber of Commerce shill on the ground.

Out jump about eight guys In zoot suits and key chains long enough to leash a Bengal Tiger.

They begin jiving with the jitterbugging Elvii.

"No," says the second Chamber of Commerce type. "It is G-men."

And out leap the guys in the pin-stripe suits.

By now it is obvious to the audience that the UFO contains an obscene number of individuals, none of them particularly alien to the planet.

They hoot and clap and stomp.

While they are doing so, a spate of masked men squirts out like an afterthought.

There is a moment's silence as the audience wonders if they are regarding the real aliens at last. Can you imagine a gang of crooks popping out of concealment to face the house of a theater filled with several hundred happy show-goers?

The perps stand there gaping and gulping just long enough for the first four Fontana brothers to pop out of confinement. Naturally, in their snappy tuxes they look like a phalanx of Fred Astaires. They leap down to the stage and disarm the robbers before the bad guys even have the wits to know what is happening.

By now the audience is rolling over in their seats and clapping, especially when each Fontana brother puts a crook in custody by the simple method of forcing him to the stage floor and sitting on him.

The Elvil are hip-swiveling, the chorus girls are posing on the ramp and the applause is deafening. These amateur actors do not know quite what to make of the additional cast members, but someone has sternly told them to go on with the show no matter what, so they are dancing and singing as if their lives depended on it. Which they no longer do, thanks to Fontana, Inc.

The most satisfying moment is when Miss Temple Barr pokes her curled red head out of the UFO to observe the scene, particularly the corralled tunnel people. She then eyeballs the audience, expresses shock and is about to dive back in, when something comes caroming out of the wings like a white tornado.

It is Mr. Danny Dove in white duck pants and cotton shirt. He sprints up the ramp to bow into the UFO and extract Miss Temple Barr in spite of herself, who looks quite in costume in her cosmic silver beaded dress.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Mr. Danny Dove announces over the portable mike in his hand,

"the creator of our fabulous finale, Temple Barr."

Miss Temple Barr looks as if she wishes she could levitate to another planet. Her face begins to compete with her hair and the crimson mist for color. She rolls her eyes up at the flies and down at the ramp, but nothing goes away, particularly the clapping, so she finally takes a deep bow and finishes with both hands above her head, in each of which is clasped a shoe with a rhinestone-studded heel, but I Imagine from the audience they look like bowling trophies or appropriately alien artifacts.

I choose that precise moment to leap down to the ramp beside her, which causes a burst of fresh laughter. I cannot Imagine why, as I have always felt I maintain a dignified demeanor at all times and in all crises.

"Louie!" Miss Temple screeches, forgetting herself and clapping her hands together, only the steel heels ring on each other like iron bells. "I was so worried about where you were."

Unfortunately, all the offstage hullabaloo drowns out the tender moment of our reunion.

Leave them wanting more is an old theater maxim, and that is precisely what happens when the curtain comes down.

Only then does Mr. Matt Devine emerge from the UFO. He and Miss Temple Barr confer feverishly with Mr. Danny Dove, who has wisely turned off his mike, while the cast buzzes with confusion and the Fontana brothers ask plaintively when they can get off the floor and their captives.

I am not the center of attention that I should be, given all my accomplishments, but then it is a crowd scene. I notice that Miss Caviar has found her way backstage and is watching me from the wings.

When I leap airily off the UFO ramp to approach her she has one word for me:

"Showboaters," she sniffs, "cannot bear to share the spotlight."

"There are no bears here. And all is well," I quote the Bard, always a good port in a storm onstage, "that ends. Period. Especially a Gridiron show."

With my tail as upright as a flagpole, I give up the theatrical life and amble offstage into a mist of crimson fog.

Chapter 41

Midnight Special

They met, as hastily planned, in the Ghost Suite of the Crystal Phoenix at midnight on the dot.

Van von Rhine had broken the house rules--her own--to import a Jeroboam of Dom Perignon to the desk. The huge bottle, diapered like a baby in white linen, lay cradled on a crushed-ice bed in a sterling silver bowl. Ranks of crystal champagne flutes surrounded the bowl like a besieging army.

Leaning against the floral wallpaper behind the desk was a framed hand-drawn map of a particularly under populated section of the Mojave desert, whose presence Temple had requested.

The Ghost Suite itself was uncharacteristically overpopulated at this pivotal hour between one day and another. The Gridiron show, ended just two hours before, was becoming history.

Besides Nicky and Van, Temple and Matt were there, along with Johnny and Jill Diamond.

Eightball O'Rourke had missed the Gridiron but not the mopping-up action afterward. Here, he represented the Glory Hole Gang, the only person present who had actually known the late Jersey Joe Jackson in his corporeal form.

Nine Fontana Brothers fiddled with the forties television set against the wall, fascinated by the ceiling-aimed screen reflected in a pop-up mirror in the cabinet lid. The brothers were of a generation used to in-your-face media exposure, not discreetly indirect images.

Midnight Louie reclined in state on the chartreuse satin love seat. Despite adapting a forelegs-forward pose reminiscent of the disdainful miens (if not the manes) of the Luxor Sphinx and the MGM Grand lion, Louie was not too dignified to refrain from eyeing with disfavor another black feline form lying on the aggressively floral carpet.

Unfortunately, nobody much noted his regal displeasure, so it was largely wasted.

"This oversized bottle of bubbly has 'Las Vegas' written all over it," Nicky was saying as he struggled to wrestle a gigantic cork from the gargantuan bottle.

''What's a Jeroboam?" a Fontana brother asked disingenuously.

"Four-fifths of a gallon," Van answered, while her spouse grunted manfully over the cork.

"All right!" came a Fontana, Inc., chorus.

Matt went over to steady the champagne bottle. Conversation, sporadic as it was, stopped, until the show was over. Nicky's forehead sprouted tiny beads of sweat to match the condensation dewing the bottle's green glass sides.

When the cork gave up the ghost, it popped like a Fourth of July firecracker.

Van jumped as if she had seen a ghost, and nervously eyed the room.

"Whooee!" Nicky jumped back to avoid a foamy burp that quickly subsided. "Reminds me of delivering a kid. What shall we christen the bouncing baby bottle now that it's open?"

"How about . . . history?" Temple quipped.

"Exactly." Nicky accepted the first delicate flute from his wife's hands and tipped the massive bottle enough to nurse a pale trickle down its crystal throat.