Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

And you said it: conquests. That's what it is for these guys, like winning at poker, or getting a hole in one or ... oh my, listen to me! I'm knee-deep in double entendres despite myself."

Matt frowned. He hadn't been listening that hard and had evidently missed some subtlety.

"What do you mean that 'conquests' are the key to it?"

"From his point of view, proof of virility. From the woman's point of view, proof of attractiveness. He may win the one-night stand, but even a professional party girl likes to think that there's something special about her, that the union was more than just a scorecard. Unless she's a competitive player too, of course. And then you have the duel of titanic egos."

"If that's the case, what's sex got to do with it?"

"Aha! By Jove--a very promiscuous god, by the way, the great-granddaddy of promiscuous gods--he's got it! I don't think that sexual record-setting has anything really to do with sex. See, that's your hang-up. You're thinking this guy's having all this lurid fun. And he isn't. Every conquest is a failure, because there are more women out there he hasn't converted. Everyone has to adore him, and prove it. His charisma has to triumph over and over. Woman after woman."

" 'Converted.' You make his quest-and-conquest routine sound like a perverted vocation."

"Exactly! He's a high priest of his own Godhood. Which is his Manhood. That's why insecurity has to be at the bottom of it. He doesn't love women. He's a man who simply can't resist a lovely, or a willing or a resistant woman. He's got to prove himself over and over, every day, every night. He's a little boy who's never believed in himself, no matter what worldly success he has achieved. He needs trophies: golf trophies, award trophies, automotive trophies, female-flesh trophies."

"You do make him sound pathetic. And what you say about charisma . . . Did you know that's a religious word? That we talk of Charism as a favor especially granted by God. A grace, a talent.

A vocation. And chrism is the oil-balm that is used for anointing; that's why the sacrament for the dying used to be called extreme unction."

" 'Unction' as in 'oil.' I never would have thought of that! That's what I saw you ... applying to Blandina Tyler's wrists and forehead."

"The anointing." He nodded, trying not to let the aftertaste of the beer, the memory, twist his lips with bitterness. His last priestly act had been performed when he was not a priest any longer, in a situation of extreme need, of extreme unction, for Blandina Tyler certainly. And perhaps for himself.

Matt sighed. This wasn't going as he had expected. He did a hasty examination of conscience on his expectations: sympathy, agreement, shared distaste for the man he had to talk to on the telephone. He had not expected: question, challenge and compassion. Temple Barr was much better at matters of conscience than she knew or than he wanted to admit.

Chapter 6

The Other Side of Paradise

Although armed with any number of esoteric facts about Domingo's lifestyle, artworks and former projects, Temple was a bundle of nerves at the thought of their first meeting.

She could tell from the magazine pieces that Domingo himself was as much of a performance artist as his projects were what used to be called "happenings" back when she was busy being born in the sixties.

Besides, as at home as she was with set designers, choreographers, actors, singers, dancers and the occasional freak-show attraction, real artists, fine artists, art artists, scared the flesh tones right out of her already pallid coloring.

They tended to be an egocentric, tyrannical lot, from what she had read of the great ones.

The less-great, from what little she had seen, were even more egocentric and tyrannical. So many of them were people -eaters, plain and simple, from Picasso to Warhol. Temple had a real distaste for being eaten, particularly since she was small enough to serve as an hors d'oeuvre for some Monster of Monomania.

She was even more nonplussed to be meeting said unknown ego at a most unusual hostelry.

The Blue Mermaid Motel downtown, once an avant-garde motor inn in the thirties, was now, quite simply, a dump.

Her several-years-old Storm looked like a million-dollar baby in the motel's shabby parking area. She hated to leave it alone without an alarm system, a thought that had never occurred to her before.

Her high heels speared food-stamp chits and greasy burger wrappers as she minced over the litter to the designated room. Above her, like some shabby Madonna thrusting up from the prow of the motel-office roof, loomed the huge plaster statue of the Blue Mermaid herself.

Where brass numerals had once indicated the proper room, all that remained was the dirt-etched outline of a one and a six. Temple didn't quite know where to place her white-knuckled knock, so she lifted a foot and rapped with her shoe toe.

The door exploded inward before she could lower her foot, so there she was, introduced to Domingo like one of his blasted flamingos, standing on one foot. At least she wasn't attired in pink feathers, or plastic.

"Isn't it marvelous?!" he demanded in a voice that could have been announcing the Second Coming, or his first one. "Fabulous! Don't just stand there gawking. Turn around and look. The Miss America of Las Vegas. Right behind you."

Temple turned. (What else could she do when Domingo seized her elbow and spun her around?)

All she saw were the cluttered, low buildings of downtown.

"Magnificent!"

She followed Domingo's dark, adoring eyes upward to the plaster figure. "Very Art Moderne

. .. ," she began.

"No! You are wrong. Art Now. I will cover the roof with flamingos, make this into a temple of fecundity and fantasy."

"Uh, it probably already is." She hadn't wanted to think about it, but some of the items she had carefully stepped around and over included used condoms, and needles.

"Yes, you see it!" Domingo's eyes narrowed as they returned to her face. "Who are you?"

"Temple Barr. Your liaison with the Convention and Visitors Authority, what passes for a Chamber of Commerce in this town. I have an appointment with you for eleven a.m."

He smiled suddenly, at her. "And is it eleven a.m., pretty lady?"

Temple cast a nervous glance at her watch. Somehow she did not want to take her eyes off Domingo. "Seven to eleven."

"Then you were on time. Domingo does not wear a watch."

He swept his arms wide, nearly knocking Temple off her feet, to display white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and hairy forearms bare of watch, bracelet or any accoutrement.

Bully for Domingo, she wanted to say, but overpowering personalities turned her into a clockwork Shirley Temple, all manners and no guts.

"Then how do you keep appointments?" she asked.

"I do not, but appointments, like you, come to me, and they keep me on time. Don't worry, we won't stay here." He had caught her eyes wandering over the less-appetizing details of the Blue Mermaid.

"I did want you to see what I'm looking for. The ambience, quint essentially American. That is where my million flamingos will blossom. All over this city. They will give it color, wit, warmth, excitement."

Temple wanted to point out that Las Vegas already had plenty of all that, but Miss Shirley fluffed her butt-length circle of crinolines, curtsied and kept a demure, dimpled silence.

"Look!"

Apparently Domingo spoke only in imperatives.

"My car comes. We will lunch someplace else."

The car (of course) was a fifties flamingo-pink Cadillac convertible, with a flamingo hood ornament, driven by an Asian man. In the backseat, riding alone, sat the dark woman from the photographs, wearing black.