Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"Gary was getting down to the luxuries. Bailey's all right?"

"Macaroni and cheese and Bailey's Irish Cream. You do know how to set a table, Kinsella."

"We should have a vegetable, to be virtuous. I'll see what I can do."

While Max foraged for what promised to be a truly original repast, Temple frowned at the copper-bottomed pot on the expensive smooth-surface ceramic cooktop. (As opposed to the stainless-steel stove on the other wall that grilled, barbecued, seared, fricasseed, took credit cards and gave change.)

Watching water come to a boil was a thankless occupation, but it gave her time to reflect how oddly ordinary it felt to be rummaging around a kitchen with Max, hunting up an impromptu meal. Never mind that the kitchen was equipped to coddle the five-star chefs of Europe, or that the man who had used to live here had died holding Temple's hand only four nights before. Or that Max actually owned this house crammed with fancy food and magical apparatus. Or was that apparati? Apparatuses?

Any port in an emotional storm.

Speaking of port, Max apparently had also found the wine cellar, no great feat for a former owner.

"For Madame's entree." He bowed like a sommelier and extended a bottle with the usual flourish. "An uppity Medoc."

"I think beer is the liquor of choice for macaroni and cheese, but wine is fine, and no doubt Orson Welles would approve."

"I don't think Orson Welles approved of much," Max said, working the cork out the way any old mortal would, with a corkscrew he found in a drawer. "Especially himself. He always had film projects under way, you know. He didn't just drop out, as many people thought. But he couldn't find the backing and the finances, and so many of them vanished into thin air."

"Thin air," Temple repeated. "Was that why he ate so much, all his dreams were immaterial, so he became totally material?"

"I doubt it," Max said, sitting opposite her at the breakfast table. "I think he ate because he truly enjoyed it. He probably inherited his tendency to overweight, and age simply ensured that heredity took over. The camera is as cruel to heavy men as it is to women."

"Yes, the camera is an equal-opportunity offender, but people aren't. Overweight women are more despised than overweight men."

"And overweight Beautiful People are despised more than anybody. Media idols aren't supposed to have our same feet of clay."

Temple gazed down at her mound of pasta tubes and bright yellow cheese sauce, steam rising from its surface like mountain mist.

"Now I feel guilty about eating this. Think of all the starving Beautiful People in the world who would give anything to exchange their diet of Kitty Litter and purified water for this!"

"Eat, drink and be merry while you may," Max suggested, lifting his glass.

"Good advice, but since I'm the leg-woman of this outfit, I'm planning to do some extensive running around tomorrow ... and tomorrow. Not much time to eat."

"What's going to keep you in constant transit?"

"My ... unconventional personal life. I'm afraid things have come to such a pass that I'm going to have to consult some psychics."

Temple couldn't tell whether Max took her statement as a promise or a threat.

Chapter 29

Behind Door Number One

Mynah Sigmund, wouldn't you know (Temple told herself), was a native talent and a local act.

She lived in an older area of residential homes, not nearly as nice as the one Max owned (Temple also told herself) . During the psychic fair, she was available at home for one precious hour a day, and Temple had brazenly booked it. For some people, five of an afternoon was the cocktail hour. For Mynah (rhymes with Car-o-lin-a), it was the withdrawing hour.

"Be there at five," she had instructed Temple. Her eyes--blue, clear and cold--had wordlessly emphasized the importance of obeying directions to the letter. "I always meditate at three P.M. for an hour, then . . . collect myself. You may let yourself in."

"I'm not to knock?"

"Knock? No. Rapping is a phenomenon I neither stimulate, nor tolerate, in my vicinity. You'll see."

Mynah smiled then, a Mona Lisa pristine-madonna smile probably intended to drive men mad. Most women would describe it as supercilious big-sister smug. But Temple had noticed that men usually fell for what most women disdained, and vice versa. It was too bad that the sexes didn't develop an anonymous cross-gender warning service.

Now Temple parked her' Storm in the semicircular driveway that aped the semicircular poured-concrete fence comprising the front of Mynah's address. Other neighborhood houses lay exposed, crowded by Joshua trees and various tall, spiky and pale desert growths. Mynah's establishment was ringed by this contradictory and virginal wall, both fluid and rounded in form, like a wave of supernaturally white sand, yet discouragingly solid and opaque. It was a wall that begged for breaking.

Against this soft/hard cold/hot white wall, and the bleached stones that covered the ground, and the uncompromisingly spotless cocaine-bright concrete that formed the driveway, the Storm's soft aqua silhouette looked strangely apropos. A blob of Southwest paint, perhaps, torn from the sky, dropped on a blank canvas and about to be smeared into an approximation of the native precious stone, turquoise.

That was the trouble with the whiteness of Mynah. Like the whiteness of the whale Moby Dick, it was unnatural, despite the naturalness of its environment. It existed to set off the color of everything else, and everything else usually suffered by comparison. Oh, the Storm looked its ordinary spirited self: blue and white are the eternal partners of peace. But Temple's red hair; now that would be an intrusion here.

Also her color-blocked linen pants suit, chosen perhaps unconsciously as a gauntlet to throw down before the anemic Mynah. And her purple, orange and Kelly-green high-heeled J. Renee pumps.

On the other hand, five was also the Sunset Hour in some parts of the country, worldand time zone. Temple straightened her gaudy padded shoulders and prepared to ring the bell, since knocking was prohibited.

But the gateway (a double-doored expanse of milk-stained mesquite) was merely arched doors split by the obvious line of separation. No knocker to drop. No practical, round period of a built-in bell to ring.

Beyond the wall and the gate, water fell in a talkative turquoise lament upon pale stones.

Village women weeping and washing in this vale of tears.

What women? What village? This was a one-time tract house, for God's sake, Temple reminded herself. She hated spells of any kind, unless they were uttered by grandmotherly women with wands, who could bring forth dazzlingly different shoes with every wave.

Glass would not be welcome in this place of stones, which were the raw material of unfired glass. Here was cool earthen removal. Withdrawal. Here was Western asceticism. Here was high-toned hokum incarnate.

While Temple searched for some implement with which to announce her arrival--a car horn, perhaps, rudely tapping out "Happy Days Are Here Again"? A single stick, scratching on the untouched-by-human-hands-except-to-buff-it wood? The sound of one foot kicking ... ?--the gate split into two sections and silently swung inward.

Temple searched for the Cyclopean eye of a security camera, but found none.

A bell rang. A single bell. One of those tony Sonoran desert bells designed by a monkish architect building a modem City of Cibola in the Land of the Peyote Sun, Temple just knew.

One of those bells that just one of cost a fortune through the very best (the most quiet, discreet, verbose) catalogs: Found at a Spanish Mission forgotten since Frey Junipero Serra first boogied down the Baja . ..