Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Dark. Light. Wrong. Right. Past. Present. Crime. Punishment. All these concepts were slouching

"Do you want to cruise?" Max asked them.

"Why not?" Temple said.

They walked to the ticket booth, a mole-hole shrouded by trees decked in fairy lights. The Goliath gondolas were gilt and red-velvet, with two facing seats meant for four, or two, not three.

Three got in: Temple on one seat, the men opposite, their long legs filling the space between. The gondola rocked, like a cradle. This was sillier than sex, Temple thought, viewing the busy lobby from an alien angle.

Yet water was soothing, and this water reflected star-flowers from the trees. An automated timer pushed the narrow craft forward, away from the lobby's noise and bustle.

"You're probably wondering why I called all of you together tonight," Max intoned in his master-of-ceremonies voice.

They cruised beneath light-spangled trees, past people sitting down to dinner or dice.

A dark arch awaited them, the mouth of the monster, open and hungry. The gondola slipped inside, and Temple's hands clenched on its gilt sides.

New light reflected the eerie shimmer of neon green constellations on the cloud-shifting ceiling, of scintillating veins of green gold on the walls: laser hologram images cast on air.

"They updated it!" Temple exclaimed.

"I never saw it before." Matt's voice.

"They added illusion," Max said. "Your illusion, Temple."

She viewed the passing walls' panorama of gossamer three-dimensional images. Mere fiberglass and fantasy she knew, yet so very reminiscent of rock and substance. Reality according to Disney: great entertainment.

Lasers cast rainbows on the pseudo-rock. Sometimes they were shadows. Sometimes ghostly faces. She saw veins of exotic ores, lost Aztec treasures, Egyptian artifacts, all glittering in laser-green, all fairy dust and delusion.

Suddenly, Max's long arm shot out as the gondola glided near a wall. A portion of rock flipped open at some subtle touch. Max pressed a red emergency "Stop" button one usually finds in elevators.

"Go get it, swimmer," he said. "We've only got a couple of minutes before someone comes."

Matt started, then his eyes followed Max's other, pointing arm to a luminous display in the opposite wall, just visible in the eerie light.

Beyond the airy dancing of laser-light twinkled a recognizable form. A Cinderella shoe from the twenty-first century.

Matt stared from Temple to Max, then pulled off his shoes, his shirt, his trousers. He dropped into the dark, laser-dappled water, stroking for the niche of light.

"This is crazy," Temple warned Max. "I don't need the actual shoe, I just need to say where it is.

How did you know I was looking for it, anyway?"

"A little bird told me."

Named Electra?

"And I know the hotel," he added modestly.

Did he ever . . . too well.

"Besides"--Max's grin was visible even in the artificial twilight--"Eightball O'Rourke is checking out the Goliath. Better that there be no question who found the shoe."

Matt was paddling back, something dazzling riding above the water in one hand. He pulled himself aboard, the gondola rocking until it almost capsized.

"Whoa!" Matt was laughing as he handed Temple a glittering something. "I guess this must be yours, Madame."

This reality was more incredible than the illusion. The low light emphasized the stones' Austrian-crystal flash as fire-opal sparks of red, green and blue. The shoe spanned the palms of her hands, white-diamond brilliant except for Midnight Louie's jet-black profile, which winked an emerald-green eye.

No one wondered if a cat's eye color was genuine. No one asked a cat where he had been, except possibly to see the Four Queens and sit on top of their dressing table. Midnight Louie would have more than one monarch to visit.

Temple laughed with delight. "If I turn up with this," she explained to Matt, who was stunned by the shoe, "I get a free pair in my size."

He had stopped gawking and was struggling to pull his clothes on over his damp skin. "That water was icier than Lake Michigan."

Temple remembered the lessons of her pose-down stint and emergency sewing job: she thought of England and not of underwear.

"Try it on," Matt suggested. So Temple slipped off her right pump with the steel heel and pushed her foot into all that flash and fire.

"Too big," she said, somehow disappointed. Glass slippers should fit the first time. "A six, probably."

"It looks ... incredible. What size will yours be?"

"A five. It'll take a few weeks for my pair to be made. I can't believe the prize is mine, and two weeks before Halloween. Max, tell me how you knew?"

She looked to the opposite seat, and saw only the dark.

Max was gone.

The water was dark and still.

She turned to Matt. They'd been too busy dressing to notice.

He stopped pulling on his own shoes to shrug. "I think the Mystifying Max says 'Happy Halloween.'"

"What do you think of Max?"

"Don't know yet. I got wet, but he gets to play Prince Charming."

"Why did we come here at his invitation, then?"

"We're congenitally curious."

"Is that so bad?"

"Sometimes. Hey, this barge is moving again."

Temple cradled the shoe against her face, as if she petted Midnight Louie in person. "I won, but it doesn't feel like it yet."

"Winning never lives up to the advance PR."

"Why do you suppose he left?"

"I have no idea." Matt eyed her cautiously in the dimness. "Was it something you said?"

"Or you? You've been spending more time with him lately than I."

He was silent for a moment. "Divide and conquer."

"He'd hardly leave us alone . . . together ... in the dark if that was his strategy."

"Maybe he would. Maybe he wants us to think just what we are thinking."

"Which is?"

"Look, Temple, we've got to settle this thing."

"Thing?"

"What's happening between you and Max?"

"Not much at the moment. We--I--can't just pick up where we left off. Too many rude questions come between us now."

"We can't pick up where we left off either." Matt didn't quite put a question mark on his final inflection, but it threatened.

"I suppose not." Temple trailed her fingers in the cool water that felt like liquid velvet.

"Maybe a moratorium is best for us all," he said.

"Maybe."

A silence.

"Maybe," Matt said suddenly, as the lobby lighting swelled beyond him, "we're doing exactly what the Mystifying Max wants."

Temple grimaced. "That's been known to happen before."

They floated into the fairy lights again, visible to passersby, on an enchanted raft Max had commandeered for a few even-more-enchanted seconds.

"He must be a hell of a magician," Matt admitted, squinting against the glare of Las Vegas's artificially lit night.

"Oh, yes." Temple smiled, serene again, holding the Cinderella slipper on her lap. "We all deserve each other."

Chapter 36

Swept Away

"Aren't you wearing your adorable Renaissance costume to the Awards Banquet and Ball this evening, dear?" Electra asked.

"I've had enough of long gowns and long hair--on either sex-- to last me until 2001."

"Oh, testy." Electra glanced at Temple in the wide mirror above the makeup shelf. "Your late night out must have been a lulu. But don't stint on the glitz, girl! If you win an award and have to collect it at the podium, you'll regret not dressing up."

"Win an award? For what? Most Nearly Crushed to Death? Best Incredible Hunk Trampoline?"

Temple stopped fluffing her curls to gaze at Electra.

Electra shrugged. "Maybe best unpublished writer. I noticed some new files appearing in the laptop.

You're writing a romance, admit it!"