Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

And this woman was blond, a creamy, caramel blond that must have come from the fairy-godmother fingers at a very expensive salon because it was too shiny and silky and unnaturally natural a color with its fine highlights to be anything but solid gold in the bleaching department.

He applauded his foresight in dressing well for the job.

“Sunset on the Strip,” she murmured.

He came over, surprised. The sun was indeed sweltering in the west like melted butter. Everybody below threw long shadows and there were a lot fewer of them now.

“Where’d they all go?” He answered his own question. “Moving indoors to gamble with dice and cards instead of ultraviolet rays.”

“Speaking of which” — she cast him a sidelong glance — “do you want to troll the casinos? Eat dinner?”

“Uh, no. I mean, we can eat dinner, but…here.”

“Oh.” She eyed him disconcertingly.

He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. All he had in mind was avoiding public places. That would eliminate the slim chance that Kitty O’Connor had somehow followed him here and would spot him, even though he’d spent three hours getting here to ensure no one followed him.

“I ordered champagne, if that’s all right.” He gestured to the footed wine cooler, designed like a temple brazier.

“Oh.” She ankled over to the bottle.

This was the first woman Matt had ever seen “ankle.” She moved as fluidly as a fashion model, all the action in her hips, shoulders and ankles. It was a strut, a stuck-up strut, but as much a strut as any stripper’s more obvious locomotion.

Vassar , huh?

The waiter had opened the champagne, thank God, although on second thought Matt decided to keep God out of this.

The flutes were etched in frosted designs, like lace embedded in ice. Matt poured carefully, anxious not to agitate the expensive wine, anxious not to regard his guest too closely.

Her fingernails were long, longer than Temple’s, and flashed a subtle metallic sheen.

“Some men,” she said after an appreciative sip that indicated his hotel bill would rise by two or three hundred dollars, “think a woman brings them luck at the gaming tables. You’d be amazed how much of my time I spend on my feet, bringing luck.”

Of course he looked at those bare, long-toed feet, and at the thin-soled, impossibly high-heeled thin-strapped shoes that decorated them. Temple would have wanted a thorough description the way Molina wanted a postmortem. Think about the shoes, not Molina and postmortems . They were pale, iridescent snakeskin constructed like a futuristic airport. He’d better leave Temple out of this as well as God. Both of them would be equally wroth with him on this one.

“Tough job,” Matt said.

She smiled at him. Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.

“You want dinner?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Another delaying tactic. It would be better to get to know her first. Wouldn’t it?

She ambled over to the burlwood desk to skim the heavily padded room service menu, like she knew just where it was. She knew just where it was. She’d been at the Goliath many times, maybe in this very room many times.

He was beginning to feel yucky about this as well as guilty, but remembered that Molina had assured him that she would be “clean.”

“What do you feel like having?”

“I don’t know. You pick. Surprise me.”

She raised a pale eyebrow. “A gambler, after all,” then lifted the phone receiver and ordered very specific dinners without glancing at the menu again.

What a pro. She’d been here, done that many times before. And that was exactly what he needed. Wasn’t it?

After Vassar hung up the phone, she swaggered over to the seating area near the window and arranged herself in one of the upholstered chairs. Her legs crossed higher on the thigh than he would have thought anatomically possible, revealing that her dress’s fluttering skirt was split up the side as far as the mind of man could go.

A shame to waste such a show on a fraud. For the first time, he wondered if he could do what he had to do. He didn’t see her as a person, a woman, but as an exotic variety of show horse, all artificial arched neck and instep, all exaggerated gait and overdressed mane and tail, all unreal.

She leaned back, lifted her elbows and supported her neck with her interlaced fingers.

Matt was able to observe from this new posture that her armpits were preternaturally bare of hair. No doubt permanently removed.

None of this was a turn-on, and he knew he had such a button, because it had been triggered a time or two.

“You’re very unusual,” she said.

“The feeling is mutual.”

She laughed, the first genuine reaction he’d seen. “I’m not unusual…. What name do you go by?”

He hesitated long enough for her to continue, “John would do, but it’s a bit predictable.”

“Thomas,” he said quickly, voicing his doubt.

“Thomas. That’s better. It may not be your real name, but it’s obviously significant to you.”

“How do you know that?”

“People are never good at making up totally unrelated things about themselves. There’s always a clue. A psychological tic. Thomas. Thomas Crowne Affair , maybe. Thomassss…Wolfe? Thomasss…Mann. Thomasss — what?”

“Merton,” he said without thinking.

“Ummm. I knew it would be an author. I didn’t know it would be such a good author.”

“You know about Thomas Merton?”

“Know? I’ve read him. Along with Proust and Genet and a lot of very depressed Frenchmen and women.”

“Your name — women in your field often take geographic names.”

“So. You have experience with women in my field.”

“No! No, I don’t. I’ve just observed.”

“I went to Vassar, yes. Graduated. Observed.” She slid onto her tailbone, revealing an impossibility: yet more leg.

My God, the woman was a stork! He sipped more champagne. Obviously, he needed to be tipsy. He noticed her glass was empty and got up to refill it.

Outside the sky was the color of a Maxfield Parrish print, that heavenly, morning-glory blue that is fading fast to green and will soon flash a fringe of yellow before dousing itself in the utter dark of night.

“I’m glad to see you enjoying something,” she said, heavy emphasis on the something .

“Nature’s hard to beat.”

“And you don’t think I’m very natural.”

“I never said —”

“‘Natural’ is not an advantage in my line of work. Or in this town. I love both of them. What’s the matter with being unreal? Is reality that great a trip?”

“Reality, usually no. People, though. Authenticity is —”

“Gawd, if I hear that pretentious word again! Au-then-ti-ci-ty. Only phonies flaunt au-then-ti-ci-ty.”

“Call it honesty, then.”

“Fine. How about you give me some.”

“What kind do you want?”

“There are varieties, like…dry honesty? Sec, or triple sec? What’s your pleasure? Or maybe it’s wet honesty, like a wet dream.”

Someone knocked at the door. Fortuitously.

Matt jumped up to answer it. A waitress wheeled in a large cart draped in white linen ( a young cowboy draped in white linen ) on which floated silver Merimacs and Monitors of covered dishes. A huge exotic flower blossomed from a vase like a tropical fungus. There were tiny sterling salt and pepper shakers, glittering glasses, another bottle of wine.

“By the window,” Matt said, unwilling to let the sunset go and leave him alone with the electric lights. He reached into the slick eel-skin wallet to peel off another hundred.

“Thank you, sir!”

Something in the tone was ironic, forcing Matt to overcome his shame of witnesses to really look at her. She was a clone of Barbara Eden as the sit-com genie, all bare midriff and glittery lavender veils and long blonde ponytail. She was petite enough to remind him of Temple, although much curvier, an observation that felt disloyal, as if this whole situation wasn’t a betrayal enough.