Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“The new breed became known throughout the West as the Tibetan terrier.”

At these words, two long, low dogs trailing golden hair came romping into the room.

“Lhasa apsos.” Amelia Wong laughed as their exuberance lapped at her hot, hose-clad ankles. (Temple had sworn off pantyhose since moving to Las Vegas two years ago.)

“They are friendly, loyal, stubborn, and surprisingly lethal when defending their turf, or their substitute Dalai Lamas. Their jaws are short, but their spirits are as tall as the mountains. I would hate to fall down amid them if I had harmed their master. Or mistress. I call them Tibetan staple guns, but I suspect in another culture they might be considered canine piranha.”

Three more of the dogs had come thronging around Temple, no doubt scenting Midnight Louie. Their eyes were hidden by Veronica Lake falls of long, blond hair, but their black button noses were patent-leather slick. Their small, smiling mouths showed teeth as small and sharp as miniature mountain ranges.

Seeing Amelia Wong with her dogs instantly humanized her.

“Your point?” an emboldened Temple asked.

“You have the heart of a Tibetan terrier.”

Temple took that for a compliment. “I’m just an American mutt,” she began.

“You were the only woman to take action when that gangster began shooting up Maylords. Almost the only one at all.” “Shucks,” Temple began. “The other was the dance man.”

Temple nodded.

“He is gay.”

Temple nodded.

“Yin and yang together. The fish who swims east and the fish who swims west.” Amelia Wong lifted a circle of black and white jade on a golden chain.

Temple had always liked the symbolic black-white curved shapes nestled in a circle, but she’d always thought of them as sperm with eyes rather than fish. She also knew the black was the yin or female, passive principle and the white was the male, active principle. It was here that Temple parted ways with Asian mysticism. Way too stereotyped, although she understood that it was more complex than simply he Tarzan, she Jane.

Amelia Wong fingered the image as she continued to consider the dramatis personae of the Night the Lights Went Out in Maylords.

“Another who moved was the blond man who worried about you. The one who looked so like the Maylord’s interior designer. I thought it was the Maylord’s man at first, but then realized this man was a guest.”

Temple nodded, more guardedly this time.

“He broadcasts most interesting chi, that man who came to your aid. Mystical, but austere. I would love to redecorate his rooms. (So would Temple thought.) What is he?”

“A radio counselor.”

When Temple hesitated, Amelia Wong’s black eyes snapped at her. “His past is deeper than that.”

“A former priest,” Temple admitted.

Wong nodded, satisfied somehow.

“The third man, who actually found the light board and gave us all the gift of darkness, he bears a dark aura himself. Yet you know him and he knows you. Who is he?”

“A … former policeman.”

“You know many in transition. Perhaps it’s because you are too. This last man is utter yang. But you have strong yang as well as yin. So. It was no accident that the four of you acted in concert.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Danny Dove is used to ordering lights on and off. Rafi Nadir once lived for civic duty. And I have an incurable meddling streak-”

“And the blond ex-priest has an incurable need to bestow salvation,” Amelia Wong finished. “I am a multinational corporation,” she continued. “I am a brand name. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the philosophy I market, that markets me.

Down, Taj!”

As one dog obeyed, the other milling Lhasa apsos all settled on their stomachs, waves of blond hair pooling around them.

“Four people in action that night,” Amelia Wong summed up. “The fifth was the shooter. And then,” she said, focusing the full power of her incredibly dark eyes on Temple, “the sixth one I sensed but could not see. The Stealthy One. Your personal yang protector in midnight black. I felt him in the dark.”

Temple felt her forearms bubble with goose bumps. Was it possible Max had been there?

Or Midnight Louie?

“You know to whom I refer.”

Temple nodded. She wasn’t sure which one … Could Max have been there unseen that night? Of course. He wasn’t a magician for nothing. And Midnight Louie? She remembered the spidery flick of hair over her cheek. Matt’s hair, as he leaned over her? Or Louie’s whiskers? Or Max moving past, unseen, but touching her. Max often managed that, somehow.

Amelia Wong laughed. “You are surrounded by forces you hardly dare acknowledge. Now you wish to ask me questions. I will answer because you have strong chi.”

“Chi is the life force, isn’t it?”

Wong nodded. “I sense you have been in danger often, but rarely harmed. I could use such a force near me now.”

“The Fontana brothers?”

“They are beyond chi! They are their own life force. And so good-looking too. I like to believe that forces for good are also

attractive. A failing for one of my calling, but a pleasant fantasy nonetheless.”

Temple blinked. This was beginning to feel like girl talk.

“I imagine that,” Temple said, “in your position it’s hard to let your hair down.”

Wong idly ran her fingers through a Lhasa apso’s silky long waves. “One can be beautiful and dangerous,” she commented. “A successful woman is expected to be both in this culture. In my own culture, successful women are not suffered gladly.”

“You’re Chinese-American.”

“And expected to excel to justify my femaleness.”

“I’ve been expected to not excel.”

“Still,” Wong said shrewdly, “your parents did not move heaven and earth to ensure only male progeny.”

“No.” Temple realized this startling fact for the first time in her life. “They had sons until they had me. And then they stopped.”

Was it possible that she was a most-wanted child? That her noisy, bossy older brothers had not been enough?

Amelia Wong bowed her head, almost in tribute. “You are a last daughter? I honor your parents. In China, a first daughter is an abomination.”

“I don’t get it,” Temple said. “In your culture, women are both unwanted and yet expected to succeed?”

“To justify our unfortunate existence. This is not China, yet still the media stands in for parents, and views me with shame and anger.”

“Successful women scare men in every culture.”

“You?”

Temple glanced at the collapsed Lhasa apsos, like so many stuffed pillows.

“I’m too small and cute to scare anyone.”

“You should. You have big bite.” Wong smiled. “I am not a Dragon Lady, but that is the only incarnation the world

respects. So … I breathe fire.”

“Okay, Amelia. Then forget the protective image. Tell me what’s really going down with you, your enterprises, Maylords, the death threats. My Stealthy Protector. I desperately want to know who you have in mind there, girlfriend.”

Wong laughed.

“I was going to order green tea for us, but I think … a well-chilled greenapple martini would do better.”

“Yep. It’s been stressful and my piranha bite could stand to chill out.”

“Spelling bees,” Amelia Wong intoned contemplatively over the first martini, which had been delivered with panache by the Fontana brother. He probably had supervised the blending process for poison.

Temple was sure now that there would be a second. She nodded sagaciously. “Your people win them.”

“This is an interesting culture. Winners are both idolized and abhorred. One day an ‘American Idol,’ the next … the nexus of scandal.”