Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"The stewardesses are wonderful. They love babies."

Temple nodded. She had noticed that stewardesses were partial to young flyers. "Adults must be such a pain."

"Adults, yes. A pain."

Temple sat on the arm of a sofa. Michelle struck her as tense. Her long, thin figure moved jerkily, like a puppet, and her eyes never settled on one place, and certainly not on Temple.

"Listen, Michelle. You've been most gracious to me, considering what you had reason to think of me. I. . . wanted you to know that there is proof that my card was tampered with. I am what I said."

"Proof?" Michelle kept moving, folding, packing delicate baby things. The child had a lot of them.

"I've found--the police have questioned--your husband's personal assistant."

"I've met her, yes. Alison. A bit wild in the fashion area, but overall a sensible young woman."

"Not really," Temple said gently. "You see, Darren had been getting letters from a young woman claiming to be his natural daughter--"

"Natural. I do not know that word in this relationship."

"His illegitimate daughter."

Michelle stopped moving, her stork like body bent over one open case. She wore a rosy pink jumpsuit in a metallic fabric, very space-age and unkind to less than ultrathin figures. She reminded Temple of one of Domingo's flamingos, a plastic ornament of sorts, frozen forever in a certain, graceful attitude.

"Daughter."

"Yes. She's an adult now ... if she really is his daughter, and there's no evidence in her background that she is. She may be simply a demented adoptee who longed for a famous father, and fastened on your husband, because of his womanizing reputation."

"Reputation."

"She'd been sending him letters. Harassing, ugly, hateful letters. That's why he consulted me in the bedroom, for privacy. He was brooding about this situation, hating himself for having abandoned someone he never knew about. I suppose, now that he had a baby daughter, he pictured himself abandoning her, and couldn't bear it."

"No, he wouldn't have been able to bear it." Michelle finally straightened from her interrupted task and looked directly at Temple. "That was the one thing I thought I could count on, no matter how much he failed me and our marriage. His love, his protective love for his daughter."

Temple nodded. "The one, truly sincere feeling in his life, which is why the existence of this bitter, vengeful adult daughter tormented him. You must believe that."

"Must I?"

"Yes, because that's why he killed himself. She came to him that night. The one unseduceable female in his entourage. She was willing, and he was hurting and--I'm sorry--I'd turned him down and even told him that he'd be getting more of that in future." Temple bit her lip. "I did contribute to his death. I know that now. I thought I was being assertive. But I was being insensitive too."

"No!--"

"I was there. I know. It wasn't really me, but I was another feather on the scale that was weighing ever heavier against him. Because his so-called daughter's revenge was truly demonic.

She went to bed with him, and then she told him who she was. He freaked, naturally. She wanted his money too, but I don't think that made him suicidal. I think it suddenly came home to him that any girl could be anybody to somebody--daughter, sister, mother--that these were young lives he played with and that he had a lot to account for. He was feeling low already, so--"

Michelle nodded violently, an expression in her eyes darker than despair. "Yes. He would have killed himself. He was so close." She looked at Temple. "But he didn't."

"How can you know? I doubt Alison Darby did it; she was so shocked by his death. Her plans hadn't included that. And of course she lost the chance to extort money from him, and she wanted it all. Nothing left for you and Padgett."

"So I preserved for Padgett what was perhaps hers, and perhaps not hers."

" You didn't. Darren did, by dying."

Michelle turned on her like a furious animal.

"Oh, but I did. I was there, you see. I had come because I had learned he was, had been . . .

with Dana, our nanny. With our daughter's nanny! I knew he was not perfect, but that. . .

frightened me. If he would cross that boundary, were there not others?"

"When were you there? Before Alison came?"

"No, cherie. After."

"But--"

"Yes! I was there when he berated himself. When I unfolded my horror over Dana, he just nodded. The gun was in his hand, in his lap. I had never seen him so passive. He took my anger like rain on dry earth, as if he needed it. When I accused him, revealed my fear that even Padgett might not be safe from him, he had not stomach to defend himself. Now I see why. I knew he loved our daughter, but I knew he could not help himself, could not keep from the sad comfort he got from his endless seductions. And what is child abuse but an unpardonable seduction? Other women I could allow, but our nanny, a girl. . . our daughter, a girl someday.

"He did not shoot the gun. He had it to his head. His temple, the classic target. I could not have stood it had it been in his mouth. But it was at his head, his mind. I touched it to take it from him. He was devastated by what I had said. Now I know why he took it so seriously. If only I had known what she had done then! I intended to stop him. Once my hand had covered his on the weapon, I seemed powerless to withdraw it. Instead I found myself pressing my forefinger over his forefinger, pulling the trigger."

"There's no evidence! Only his fingerprints on the weapon."

Michelle held up long arms thin and pale as flamingo legs. "I wear gloves. It is my fashion trademark. I wear them everywhere when I go outside, because I wear them in my perfume ads.

I destroyed the gloves. Burned them. I cannot excuse myself. Another self pulled the trigger back. It was hard to do. He must have sensed me doing it, but he didn't move. He just waited. In a sense, it felt like a mercy killing."

Her eyes, haunted, met Temple's for the last time.

"What you have told me eases nothing. No wonder he did not fight my accusations! That girl killed him despite herself, through me. What should I do? Whatever I do, Padgett will have to live with it all her life."

"So will you," Temple said. "If only I hadn't come. You wouldn't know, and I wouldn't know I can't say what you should do. I don't know what I should do."

"We could tell, each or both of us."

Temple kept silent.

Michelle eyed her aslant. "It will make for an interesting tension. Wondering if one or the other will tell, and when."

"I would have to think about it for a long time."

"A lifetime, perhaps."

Temple stood. In the other room, Padgett was giggling to herself. The tension was already awful, and it would only get worse.

"Good-bye," Michelle said.

Only she said it in French. 'Au revoir."

Temple left without another word, because no words were sufficient.

Au revoir . She remembered from college French class that it was an uneasy good-bye. The direct translation was closer to "until we meet again."

Temple finally had found a secret too awful to tell another living soul.

Chapter 38

Louie Seeks Solace

I am not one to wash my dirty linen in public, but I am in a quandary.

The A La Cat commercial has been unmentionable ever since my regrettable abduction and alteration.

Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette left town so suddenly that they may have been abducted themselves by a UFO. (Do not laugh. There is a lot of that around Las Vegas and the nearby Air Force base, the famous Area 51 beloved of alien-intelligence aficionados.) I have had no opportunity to confirm the dread news about the lovely Yvette. Is she indeed soon to become a mother? Perhaps she will lose her kittenish figure and no longer be in demand for television commercials.