Douglas, Nelson: Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

The Voice kept silent for an unprecedented minute and more.

"I've drunk myself cold out, sometimes, afterward. Maybe that is a death wish. Maybe I oughta call that L.A. shrink, or all three." A laugh. "You scared the hell out of me this time. I think I'll make it. You're worth every penny."

"This is a free service."

"Not when I'm calling long-distance."

"You're calling long-distance? You're not in Las Vegas?"

"Now, yeah."

"But before, you've called from out of the area?"

"From out of the country, pal."

"That's ... absurd."

"No. You're worth it. I've been telling you. You're the best."

"The best?"

"Yeah. I told you."

"You mean . . . you call other hotlines?"

"Sure, all over. Hey, I go all over, and the Devil on my back is ready to ride every goddamn night I'm alive. But, don't worry, you're the best."

"Don't you see? You're playing the same game with me ... with all of us anonymous counselors, that you play with your wife."

"So what? You're jealous, is that what you're saying? You want to be the only one, or some dumbass thing? Hotline counselors are just like women?"

"No, I'm saying that you're the same, with everyone and everything. Until you see that, and work to change it, you're going to trust no one, not even yourself."

"You can't fool me, Brother John. Everybody wants the same thing from me: attention, time, all my attention and all my time. Well, I'm a busy guy. I belong to the world. I don't need this policing. I don't need your shrink list and your straight-arrow shock over the phone. Forget I called; I won't make that mistake again."

The line hummed like an angry bee. Dial tone. Empty line.

Unoccupied. The Voice, exiting on an egocentric, aggrieved note, was gone.

Matt hung up the phone, still wondering what had hit him.

The man was a master manipulator. Matt knew that, had always recognized the fact. He'd encountered such carelessly charismatic personalities before, often in very successful people, very insecure people. Still, this time Matt had been caught off guard. All that sincerely articulated flattery about how much Matt did for the man, how he helped him. But no one could do anything for this particular man, who gaveth and who taketh away. Always he had to take away: you are not really the One. You are not really Unique. You are only One of. I am Unique and you are One of Many who take/want/beg/ borrow from me. My time, my attention, my intimacy. I award it everywhere so that you will know you are Nothing Special. Only I am Something Special.

Matt shook his head. His callers didn't often leave a bad taste at the back of his mouth. He seldom felt that they were hopeless cases. And he never believed that they deserved their own misery. This man did, he thought with a flare of rare anger. Wasting ConTact's literally precious time, tying up the line when someone truly troubled--and deservingly humble--might have needed to call in.

"Deservingly humble." Matt replayed that phrase in his mind. His own education and experience, steeped in the Beatitudes from the Mount, argued that the meek had a place on the earth, if not over it. Many religions emphasized self-effacement to the point of self-abasement.

That wasn't any healthier than a rampaging ego that seduced and subdued every other person around it. Self-serving people were hard to like, in Matt's book of flaws, but they still needed help even when they were stomping your own self-esteem as flat as road kill.

He knew that. Already the sting of personal betrayal, a form of superego, was fading.

He also knew that the Voice would call again, and ask for him. Only him. Always him. Even from long distance.

Chapter 2

Strange Birds of Paradise

"Nine hundred thousand plastic flamingos?"

Temple Ban wasn't sure of her own name, couldn't be certain she hadn't been transported into an alien universe. She couldn't believe her ears, and she was sure most people wouldn't believe their eyes if they ever saw nine hundred thousand pink plastic flamingos in one humongous flock.

But that's what Bud Dubbs was talking about, right here in his staid but cramped office at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. And the flamingos, nearly a million strong, would blanket the Little Town That Could, if international conceptual- artist Domingo had his way.

"Well," she said faintly, " 'Domingo's flamingos' has a certain ring to it. I can't believe the board has okayed this flamingo-wrapping scheme."

"The man is a recognized genius," Bud said, "at publicity, if nothing else. He wanted to cover Hoover Dam, but I convinced him it was too remote to receive the proper media attention."

"So he's going to smother the Strip in flamingos? That'll stop traffic all right."

"He's agreed not to install conceptual artworks anywhere they might impede vehic ular or foot traffic. This will be an improvised installation, his first. He will tour the area, get inspired and then . . . put out flamingos."

"Bud! I can't believe all the Strip enterprises would approve this flaky idea."

"Well, they haven't. That's where you come in."

"Me?"

"We need a freelancer to temporarily assist Domingo. Follow him around. If he settles on a site, try to clear it with the necessary honchos. If they say no, break it gently to Domingo. If they say yes, see that the installation doesn't impede business."

"You want a diplomat, hostage negotiator and baby-sitter all in one!"

"Exactly. With all the different clients you handle you're used to the sticky field situations that could come up--"

"Like murder of the conceptual artist in question! Come to think of it, plastic flamingos could serve as headstones in the Truly Tacky Graveyard."

"You have to suspend judgment. Domingo has been hailed the world over for altering the way we look at our landscapes. He's the man who hung a green-and-red spaghetti curtain from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He concocted the world's largest horizontal chocolate milk shake from one end of the Brooklyn Bridge to the other and got the mayor of New York to suspend traffic for twenty-four hours while it was set up, displayed and eaten. Or drunk. Or slurped."

"What was the message of that: New York sucks?"

"I know it's nuts. Sure the guy's a banana. But he has Time magazine photo spreads , Paris-Match features, you name it. When Domingo does, the world looks."

"Not every enterprise in Vegas needs or wants publicity nowadays. In fact, some are downright surly about cooperating on even self-serving projects, not to mention more mainstream ones. The job you're proposing I handle is like being one unpopped kernel of corn in a forest fire."

"We'll pay you well"

"Hmm. What do you know about Domingo that I don't?"

Bud handed a gold foil-embossed, glossy black folder across the paper canyons of his desk.

"Money," Temple diagnosed with a puritan sniff. "This guy must waste tons of money."

"But he has it to waste. People and institutions underwrite his projects. Artsy people. Eyeball those press releases."

Temple scanned letterheads listing a wealth of East and West Coast arts groups. It seemed the middle of the country was much more middle-of-the-road about Domingo's conceptual creations. But then there were all his European stunts... er, installations .. . and all the eminent museums arrayed behind the artistic angler.

Color photos showed a white-shirted Domingo directing several of his mammoth enterprises: a flotilla of fifty thousand French horns on the Seine, for instance. The project illustrated the subtle musical tension of moving water, one critic said, making a strong plea for the ecological rights of the planet, per se.

"What about the ecological rights of Las Vegas?" Temple demanded. "We're already considered the Capital of Crass. A million flamingos aren't going to improve our image any. It's a large-scale joke on the entire town, don't you see? It allows the intelligentsia to poke fun at sacred cows, with Las Vegas as the silly old bossy vain enough to be conned into looking like a worse parody of itself than it already is."