Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

Altogether a most undignified illegal entrance. The only thing missing from this comedy of erroneous entry is the usual dead body I have a knack for stumbling over, especially in strange places, in the dark.

I attain my balance and swagger forward. Fortunately, this closet is so dark that the hypercritical Louise has not witnessed my struggles.

I step over the nearest supine human chest and sniff hopefully for Miss Louise’s unmistakable scent.

I am sitting, sniffing, on a supine human chest and it is not moving: neither to sit up and unseat me, or to make like it is breathing in and out and going up and down. Come on! Go up and down!

No. Uh-oh. It is business as usual for Midnight Louie. Most of my horizontal humans are dead, not sleeping, unless I am safe in my bed at home, which is supposedly Miss Temple’s bed, exceptthat all beds are the immemorial and hereditary property in perpetuity of cats. Why else do they call them king and queen-size models?

I am amazed that Miss Midnight Louise has held her tongue for so long when she has the opportunity to lord it over me and claim the body as her first find.

That is when I realize that I do not scent so much as a hair from Miss Louise’s body.

She is not here.

It is most unlike Miss Midnight Louise to abandon a fresh kill.

Unless the departure was not voluntary.

Car Trouble

Temple cast one fond farewell look over her shoulder at her aqua Storm. Although sun-faded, the car looked remarkably perky for its age. It had served her well but now it was sitting on a used car lot and she was moving on to a hot new property.

She felt like a traitor. A car took possession of its owner’s history. It was a silent witness to life’s big and small moments. She would be able to date certain occurrences from now on by whether it was before, during, or after she was driving the Storm…or not. Owning a car was almost like going steady.

The “or not” lay ahead of her in all its new-car glory.

So Temple let the Storm slip into the rearview mirror of her memory and advanced on the shining form of her new wheels, a Miata.

She knew every argument on the planet against convertibles: your hair will get scrambled, your eyes will get dried out, and you’ll end up with skin cancer. But hey, the tiny trunk was almost big enough to hold a hat, and the glove compartment could certainly contain a small bottle of sunscreen, which she would apply, along with sunglasses and scarf, with the religious zeal of a redhead.

She opened the driver’s door and got in.

The hat she hadn’t bought yet, nor the sunscreen, but she could put on the sunglasses.

The sun warmed the top of her head. She looked around for someplace to stow her ownership papers so they wouldn’t blow away. The tiny glove compartment.

She turned the key in the ignition, inhaled the sun-baked scent of new car and resisted looking back one last time at the Storm.

This was the first car she had bought all by herself. The Storm had been a Barr Family Production, at least all parts of the Barr family that were male, which most of it was, except for her mother and herself.

Her father and brothers had kicked the tires, negotiated with car dealers, done everything but drive it. This baby was hers alone! She had visited all the web sites, tracked down the MSRP, interrogated the local dealers, and finally decided who she would allow to sell her the car at her price.

Temple hoped that her price was the rock-bottom one it should have been.

She sighed deeply and then eased out the brake. Everyone always watched a new owner toodle away as if driving over shattered glass. Hah! She put the car in gear and spurted out onto the freeway access road like a crimson jackrabbit, safe but not sorry.

In a minute she was on 95, her short curls curried by the desert wind. The car fit her like glove leather, with which it was indeed lined.

The only negative was that her exit came up too quickly and she was soon trolling mundane city streets again (if city streets could ever be mundane in Las Vegas) at a sedate thirty-five miles an hour.

Taking a spin in her new car seemed like a good idea, but which direction could she spin it in? All dressed up and no place to go…

She knew: the Crystal Phoenix. The Grand Opening had been last week, so she wanted to sneak up on the crowds patronizing her various bright ideas there, the Jersey Joe Jackson Action Attraction, the petting zoo, the Domingo performance art garden…. Amid the opening crowds and hoopla, she hadn’t been able to savor every little touch.

Temple spun the small steering wheel around the next corner, and the next, until she was on the car-crowded Strip, just another gawker in a mechanical bumper-car game of hot metal, lurching her way to Byzantium, or at least the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino.

She drove up the long, curving drive, thinking everybody was staring at her, which they weren’t. There were far more pricy and exotic cars in the queue.

She hopped out to let the valet take the precious car instead of parking it in the far back lot and hiking up to the hotel’s rear entrance as usual.

Sticking the parking chit in her tote bag, where it was promptly lost, Temple strode into the main entrance on her high-rise heels.

Somebody whistled.

Obviously not at her.

She strode ahead as only a determined short woman can.

Someone whistled again.

She risked a glance over her shoulder: Armani suit at three o’clock high, bearing down on her in a cotton-candy cloud of unwrinkled wool-silk blend, no easy deed in Las Vegas.

So here she was: IDed, targeted, and shot down by a Fontana brother in full flight.

Whether Temple or the Fontana brother was in full flight was a good question.

She spun and stopped to wait for the inevitable to catch up with her.

“I am hurt,” he said when within hearing distance. “Miss Temple Barr deigns to visit my brother Nicky’s tacky little establishment and she intends to hit the front door without a suitable escort.”

He paused to fold his hands in front of him and smile rebukingly down on her.

“Take off those extreme-price shades so I can see the whites of your fine Italian eyes,” she said,“and can tell who you are. I don’t accept anonymous escorts.”

He shrugged and peeled off the wraparound Porsches.

Not Aldo, or Julio, or Rico, or Giuseppe, or Ernesto. Temple put her brain through boot camp. What were the other Fontana names? Not Vito. Or Fabrizio, thank Jove. Wasn’t one named something unlikely? Panache? Pinocchio?

“Ralph, at your disposal,” he said. “It appears that I am the only member of the family on hand to do the host’s duty. How may I be of service?”

Temple eschewed the obvious, as was always wise with a Fontana brother. “Well, I could use a good guide.”

“I am the best. To what?”

“To the best of the Crystal Phoenix. I’m here to give the new attractions a post-opening test drive, so to speak, as an unsuspecting member of the the public.”

“Speaking of test drives, I see you have a snappy new car. I can get you a Maserati for a very good price.”

“I don’t doubt it, Ralph, but the car I drove up in is the best I can afford and I think of it as a Maserati in training.”

“No doubt you are right.” He offered an arm. “Am I right in assuming that the honor of being your escort on this occasion will mean an expedition on the Jersey Joe Jackson mine ride?”

“Why, yes. You have any reservations about the JJJ mine ride?”

“Many, all having to do with digesting a superb lunch of veal Venezia at the Rialto.”

“Don’t worry. I left special instructions that the mine ride personnel be equipped with, how shall I put it, barf bags?”