Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Apparently his commitment had found some answering pas in that media ice maiden, Amelia Wong. Ms. Wong’s American first name was the hallmark these days of a second-or third-generation AsianAmerican torn between two worlds and doing quite spectacularly in both, thank you.

“Shrimp can be here,” Amelia Wong declared. “Shrimp is orange and delicate in taste. Pork must be to the extremes. It is strong and earthy.”

“Sweet and sour,” he riposted. “Sauce for each dish is sweet-and-sour. You keep sweet-and-sour together. For balance.

As with yang and yin.”

“Ym and yang. You can’t even get that right.”

“I have get everything all right until you come on scene.”

Temple considered that many a feng shui client might think the same thing after a domestic makeover according to Wong.

People were generally torn between acting as immobile as a herd of sheep or snapping up every convenient trend that sprang up around them like clover. And so they were ready to knock over the traces and leave the trends behind in an empty pasture … with other, earthier leavings.

“Isn’t there some compromise?” Temple asked, stepping between the combatants.

He said: “No. Food does not compromise. Chef never compromise.”

She said: “How can one compromise with divine harmony?”

Temple lowered her voice. “Listen. Maylords is paying you both princely sums to enhance their opening festivities. Surely the universe of divine harmony recognizes fiscal balance. Bottom line? Checkbook?” “Principle,” Ms. Wong declared through grape-glossed lips, “is everything.”

“In financial matters as well as spiritual ones,” Temple pointed out.

Ms. Wong received this observation in silence.

Hooray, Temple had rung a bell. Maybe on a cash register.

“I can move the pork down three places, no more.” Chef Song pointed magnanimously with the cleaver, to which a few translucent flakes of raw onion clung like … yuck, tissue.

Ms. Wong’s obsidian eyes followed the gesture and studied the suggestive CSI-like evidence clinging to the broad steel blade.

Her eyes and voice matched the cleaver’s sharpness. “That would be sufficient. I must have my shrimp central and foremost.”

He bowed. “Shrimp is the empress of appetizers.” “Agreed. It was never about the shrimp.”

Ms. Amelia had to look up to look down her snub nose at him. She had accomplished this while accessorized with… Temple, impressed, sneaked a quick peek downward. Wow! Seattle space-needle-high Jimmy Choo heels, several seasons newer than Temple’s.

For Temple owned a pair of Choo shoes herself. They had been acquired at a resale shop, were only three inches high and four years old. Ms. Wong’s model, however, had graced the feet of Lucy Liu in the most recent issue of InStyle magazine.

Temple wondered briefly if there was an offshoot of feng shui called Feng Choo. Either way, Temple could sympathize with pint-size women seeking a leg up on the competition in the business world.

Amelia Wong moved the length of horseshoe-shaped table, switching the placement of plum and mustard sauce bowls according to some universal order known only to a domestic arts master.

Chef Song shook his head and muttered words Temple could not translate, fortunately.

Beyond them both loomed an overpoweringly orange backdrop: the spotlit gleaming bulk of the Nissan Murano. This was one of those crossover vehicles: a kinder, gentler SUV doing all it could to avoid any stylistic hint of an old-fashioned station wagon. A local dealer had provided the new model as the door prize for the Maylords end-of-the-week raffle. Amelia Wong’s last act would be selecting the winner.

Kenny Maylord and his wife edged over to Temple now that the former celebrity combatants were contentedly plying the buffet table and switching each other’s arrangements around. Flowers, food … it was all musical chairs.

“I’m used to temperamental interior designers,” Kenny said, “but this takes the cake. Honey, this is Temple Barr, the local PR hiree.” As Temple acknowledged the introduction to Kenny’s thirty-something wife, he told her, “I understand from Ms. Wong’s PR gal that your work at Las Vegas Now! saved our skin as far as TV coverage goes. I guess I didn’t get it at the time.”

Temple accepted his sheepish smile as an apology. “The situation was out of our control. We needed to spin the dial back our way again. Sometimes it takes extreme measures.”

Mrs. Maylord, a bland-brown-hair clone of her husband, stepped closer to speak under her breath. “Things are so … dramatic in Las Vegas. We never would have had that kind of problem back home in Indianapolis.”

Such a Ken and Barbie couple: same height, same coloring, same plastic Stepford-spouse look, with more than a touch of

American Gothic behind it. No way would they understand Las Vegas and its high-rolling ways without spending some time here. It was a far cry from Indianapolis.

Temple, herself an escapee from the sound-alike city of Minneapolis, felt sorry for this poster couple for stable midwestern values. Las Vegas lived and died on a fault line of change and hype. There was nothing stable or midwestern about it, but, on the other hand, it was fun.

“I think the chop shui crisis has been handled,” she said.

She eyed the two artistes, who were each rapidly undoing each others’ adjustments. It was like watching two neighboring nations moving guard stations on the border.

Amazing how unnecessary busywork defused tensions.

“I’ll just be happy when the opening huzzahs are over,” Mrs. Maylord said, with feeling. She extended a hand. “I’m Barbara, by the way.”

Temple, shocked by the name, shook a palm that was as dry as white cotton gloves, amazed at her own prescience. Ken and Barbie.

“Temple Barr.”

“What an interesting first name.”

“I don’t know how I got it, and I used to hate it. Wanted to be an Ashley in the worst way, but now I kind of like it.”

Mrs. Maylord leaned inward. “You don’t know what I’d give not to be a Barb. I always feel like a fishing lure.”

Temple laughed out loud. Maybe bland hid unsuspected spice.

“That’s why our kids are named Kelly and Madison. Guess which one is the girl.”

“Wouldn’t even try. I think that’ll be a big step forward in the future, gender-neutral names, I mean.”

“Don’t tell Kenny,” she confided. “He thinks we’re being Eastern and trendy.”

Temple nodded, finger to lips, and turned to check on Song and Wong. Oh, no! Asian surnames had a monosyllablic simplicity her own echoed, but lent themselves to the most outrageous English wordplay.

She thought of Merry Su, the small but assertive detective who worked for Molina. A good role model. Temple considered herself small but assertive.

Speaking of assertive, where had the newly protective Matt got himself to?

She turned, satisfied to leave Wong and Song at opposite ends of the buffet table, still moving dishes like chess pieces in an elaborate game.

While she watched, the central display of queen shrimp on beds of crushed ice exploded into a salmon-white fireworks of

flying chips and flesh.

Her ears thundered with a dull knock-knock-knock sound. Who’s there?

Flying shards of plate glass joined the ice chips exploding in air.

“Hit the ground!” a male voice shouted.

Temple did a four-point landing on her knees and the heels of her hands without thinking. Both stung, maybe bled.

Above her foodstuffs spattered in time with a staccato whomp-whomp-whomp sound, almost like a hovering helicopter.

“Hit the lights!” another male voice bellowed.

Temple recognized Danny Dove’s commanding choreographer’s bark.