Temple waved off the maitre d' and joined Sunny, navigating the tables and chairs by guiding her bulky tote bag around them. When she arrived at the table, Sunny lifted her purse--
a wafer-thin fold of cobalt leather that could hold one letter and several very thin dimes--from the empty chair.
Temple collapsed into the seat, slinging her tote into the well between herself and the window.
"We missed you at the last WICA meeting," Sunny said.
WICA had nothing to do with witchcraft, but stood for Women In Communications, Associated, an organization that included PR and media women. Sunny was a television reporter with a local channel, a woman so unflappable that she was sometimes suspected of being an attractive corpse. Temple knew her impassive air wasn't impartiality, but rather an attempt to keep wrinkles from her pale, porcelain skin.
'I've been a tad busy," Temple admitted.
"We've read about it. Isn't your job to get news of your clients in the paper, not yourself? Or your cat's puss in print?"
''Can I help it that Midnight Louie is so darn photogenic? And I wish they had cropped me out of that fire rescue photo. I looked like Little Orphan Annie fresh from a spin-dry."
''You looked adorably rumpled. I wish I could look adorably rumpled."
Temple eyed Sunny's blond chin-length hair, smooth as satin except for the pert flick at the ends. "Believe me, rumpled is not your style, even in life-threatening situations."
"You've been prone to those lately," Sunny noted, leaning back to make room for a padded vinyl menu cover large enough to play checkers on.
Temple cracked hers open, then peered over its top. "This is as hefty as the Ten Commandments and it's just the luncheon menu. What do they offer at dinner--an encyclopedia?"
"The waiters probably wear sandwich boards." Sunny snapped the impressive volume shut.
"I'll have the usual. Why did you want to see me?"
As the waiter approached, Temple desperately eyed the menu. She was having her usual identity crisis about what to order from a strange bill of fare. The banana, papaya and kiwi fajitas sounded truly intriguing, but then so did the swordfish quiche.
She caved in and ordered what Sunny always did: salad, but a fruit version instead of the house greens.
''Are you doing anything for the Gridiron this year?'^ Temple asked.
Sunny's pale blue eyes grayed with wariness. ''Maybe. Usually I play a bit part in the show.'*
Sunny's bit parts always involved wearing filmy lingerie, if the male skit writers had anything to do with it.
"I meant, are you writing anything?'' Temple said.
"No. I seldom do."
"Well, I always do, and I just realized I never got an announcement requesting skits for the show. I've been a little stressed out lately," Temple added modestly, referring to her moment of disheveled glory on page fourteen of the Las Vegas Sun.
"Really?" Sunny unfolded her napkin and sipped from her goblet of spring water, in which floated the obligatory lemon slice.
"Really. Sunny, you're always on the fringes of the Gridiron group. What's going on?"
Sunny's long, pale fingernails nudged the silverware this way and that while her eyes considered the panorama beyond the window, the familiar flock of Las Vegas hotels grazing along the Strip like a colorful exhibit of architectural dinosaurs.
"Sunny!"
Temple was at last rewarded with a direct glance, one that quickly dodged again to neutral territory. "I didn't know you hadn't heard anything. Temple. Honest. But, if you didn't, it might have something to do with this year's chairman."
"I've always participated in the Vegas Gridiron Show, just as I used to in the Twin Cities."
Temple's tone of voice wavered between puzzlement and a grumble. "My song satires are usually chosen for the opening and closing production numbers, for heaven's sake. Why would they forget to tell me about it? They need my stuff. What chairman?"
Temple was forced to interrupt her tirade in order to make way for a platter of leafy greens topped with such exotically sliced and contorted fruit that they appeared to have come fresh from the hands and meat cleaver of Chef de Sade himself.
''We should have split one," Sunny said ruefully, gazing on her own humongous house salad.
''Sunny! What chairman?"
Sunny did what she seldom did, so Temple knew the situation was really serious. She sacrificed her deadpan composure and her rice-paper complexion to make a face.
"Well, who is it?" Temple demanded.
"Crawford Buchanan."
"What? Who would make him show chairman? He doesn't even write for a real newspaper--"
"Neither do I; I broadcast. And you're not in media anymore."
"Still, I'm a Gridiron veteran, and nobody ever had any problem with my participation before. So Crawford has blackballed me?"
"Maybe it's not personal. Nobody who usually writes for the show has been notified of a skit deadline."
"Nobody? When's the show this year?"
"October eighteenth."
"That's less than a month away! Rehearsals will begin any day now. What can Awful Crawford be thinking of? Even he isn't crazy enough to . . . oh, no!"
Sunny nodded as she nibbled a leaf of undressed romaine. "Um hmm. The word is he's going to write the show himself. Solo."
"So low" Temple corrected her with feeling. "That egotistical...worm. He's written a skit or two before, but what makes him think he can come up with ninety minutes of topical satire--
funny topical satire--all by himself?"
"Male ego?" Sunny suggested.
''That answer insults males everywhere. Crawford has the ego for a stunt like this, but his qualifications in the other department are very iffy."
"Temple, I know you don't care for him, but maybe he'll do all right."
She shook her head, rejecting the possibility that Crawford Buchanan could come up smelling like anything other than an' onion. "How did he get named to the job? Why doesn't the Society of Journalists' committee ever name a woman show chairman? Don't answer: apparently women aren't as overbearing as Crawford Buchanan."
"I heard he made a pitch to the board about how he could do it better than anybody. Cited his experience covering the Vegas entertainment scene."
"Crawford doesn't 'cover' it, he oozes all over it."
"Why do you hate him so much?"
"It's not him, Sunny, it's the principle of the thing. Although, when Crawford Buchanan's involved, principles usually have zilch to do with it." Temple sat back to view her truly awesome salad from a distance. She picked up a convoluted curl of kiwi. "Buchanan is incompetent, self-important, sexist, greedy and utterly thoughtless, hardly a candidate for Man of the Year."
"You've got no argument from me about the creep, but don't let him get to you."
. "I can't help it. He offends my sense of justice. Maybe it's what a friend suggested: I secretly envy him for getting away with being so useless. God knows what the subjects of this year's skits will be, much less the quality."
Sunny smiled. "Especially without your socko openers and I closers. You're a whiz at that."
"Thanks."
"I suppose you won't do your annual stint on stage either this year?"
"You mean if I even get asked? Will any of us WICAns be asked? Knowing Crawford, he'll recruit the night shift from the Lace 'n' Lust. I wouldn't appear in 'Crawford's Follies' for anything. I do hate to see a good tradition sink under the overweight ego of a featherweight like Buchanan."
Temple pushed away her untouched plate, kiwi curl and all. ''Anyway, I have bigger salmon to saute. I just presented the owners of this hotel, with a hot new scheme to pump up their popularity with the family traveler."
''Really? A whole concept? That's a big commission, Temple."
Television reporters seldom sounded impressed, even off the job, but Sunny did now.
Temple decided to let Crawford Buchanan crawl away into the back of her mind where he belonged, like a scorpion in the sun on a faraway wall where it couldn't hurt anyone.