"Not for any lack of Chef Song's meat cleaver. That old black cat is too fast for him, despite his looks, and he takes a lot of look-sees at the koi in this pool, believe me." Temple did, and followed Ralph indoors again to meet Chef Song, and his staff and meat cleaver, in the hotel's pristine stainless-steel-equipped kitchen.
She also toured the cavernous basement from chorus girl dressing rooms, an area of apparently avid interest for Ralph, to the huge below-stage elevators that wafted sets and scenery up to the waiting audience above.
"This reminds me of my days at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis," she remarked in the echoing silence of the stage's underbelly. ''What's topside like?"
Ralph escorted her into a service elevator in a deserted area of the basement. Their first stop was the theater level, where Temple wandered onto the deserted stage under the cold, dead spotlights to eye the empty seats.
Ralph, apparently having no dramatic instincts, remained by the backstage light switch.
Temple hadn't been on a stage in . . . oh, years now. The theater's eternal, invisible magic lurked in the darkness, like the Mystifying Max about to launch an illusion at an unsuspecting audience. The wooden stage floor echoed the crisp snap of her high heels, throwing shards of the sound all the way to the back row.
Temple found a deserted theater both romantic and creepy, a beast of sleepy silence on the brink of breaking into screams and howls. In any theater, a sensitive ear could detect memory echoes of all the lines, action, drama that had ever taken place on its abandoned stage, and ever would. But this was a Las Vegas hotel stage; the action fated for it was as gaudy, gleeful and hokey as the more unrehearsed dramas playing nightly in the hotel gaming and bar areas.
Ralph blinked the backstage light off and on to signal his eagerness to move on, so Temple rejoined him without indulging the urge to recite Portia's ''quality of mercy" speech, which she still knew by heart from the high school play.
"Johnny Diamond has been the headliner here as long as I've been in Vegas," Temple said,
"but I've never seen his act."
Ralph rolled his eyes in grudging envy. ''That guy. What a voice. Always packs 'em in, Wednesday through Sunday nights.''
''You're dark two nights then, Monday and Tuesday?"
"Yeah. Except when some special group comes in for a one-night stand, like the Gridiron in a few weeks. Must be some sports thing."
"The Gridiron? That's going to be held here this year, really?" At Ralph's mystified nod, she couldn't help bragging a little. "The Gridiron's the local journalists' annual satirical review. I usually write skits for it, and take a role now and then, when dragooned into it. Lordy, is Gridiron time here again already? Funny, I haven't heard a call for scripts."
"You mean this Gridiron is just a bunch of local newspaper types writing stuff?" Ralph sounded deeply disappointed, "Why'd they rip off a sports name then? To fool people?"
"The Gridiron show satirizes politicians at the local and national leveclass="underline" movers and shakers and newsmakers. It's called a 'Gridiron' because its wit is supposed to skewer the local public personalities, put them on a gridiron until they feel the heat. All in good fun, of course."
"Like a roast of some movie star?"
"Roasted and toasted."
"All right! Speaking of hot times on stage, you should see this place when Johnny cracks out the vocal chords . . . women throwing themselves at him, along with their room numbers and other little personal items, what we would call--"
"Niceties?" Temple supplied diplomatically.
Ralph frowned at the obviously unfamiliar word. "No nighties, more like naughties. Johnny's as married as Queen Elizabeth, but they don't care. He's got his hair long like Michael Bolton now, and that really wows 'em. I been considering a pony tail myself. What do you think?"
Ralph turned to display a neat nape of patent-leather black hair.
"Um, it might interrupt your collar line."
"Yeah. And I don't know how you girls comb all that stuff back there, either." He glanced at Temple's halo of rambunctious red curls and frowned again. ''Maybe an earring."
She reached automatically to her naked lobe. Was she missing something?
"Not you. Me. Whatta you think?"
"I think the ring is enough."
He fanned his hand to regard his Roman beauty of a ring as well as display a manicure as subtle as Van von Rhine's. Temple edged her snagged forefinger nail behind her back. The only thing subtle about her home-made manicure was today's pink color: Ravished Rosebud.
''Yeah." Ralph was still meditating on his grooming. "This knuckle knick-knack is the genuine artifact, dug up along the Appian Way--not the phony Appian Way at Caesars Palace across the Strip, but the real thing. In Rome. It's a street, but like real old."
"Well. When in Rome, Mr. Fontana, we ought to take a tour."
"Right. The roofs next."
"I can hardly wait," she murmured, following him back to the service elevator.
The roof, fourteen floors up, featured the aforementioned Fontana Lounge, looking shabby.
By daylight, its lavish neon was a grid of dead, gray tubes you might see in a forties black-and-white mad scientist movie.
Ralph conducted Temple around the rooftop obstructions, holding her hand so she could navigate on the wobbly gravel.
"What's the big attraction up here?" she wondered.
Ralph's grin was wide. "Nicky and Van's penthouse."
"I don't think we should intrude--"
"Why not? They ain't here. See, this is the hot tub area. Spiffy, huh?"
"Very nice." Temple corrected herself internally. Very, very nice. She eyed the molded whirlpool bath surrounded by decking, chairs, carelessly tossed towels and shrubbery. What a great place to view the stars--or even more of a light show, the neon of nighttime Las Vegas.
Ralph had wandered over to a long wall of glass, pressing his face against it all the better to see inside.
Temple was feeling distinctly nervous. ''I don't think we should violate the Fontana's' privacy by slinking around here."
"What's to violate?" Ralph sounded indignant. 'They're not here, I told you. Besides, I'm a relative. You should see the bedroom. Ritzy. Even has a moon roof."
"A . . . moon roof, like in a car?"
"Right. Only bigger, and right over the bed. Slides back so you can see all the way to Serious, or whatever star is out there."
"Really, Mr. Fontana, I'd rather see the hotel's more public areas--"
Ralph Fontana suddenly lifted his hands and pushed his ears forward, like an elephant's. He stuck out his tongue and made rude noises.
Temple, speechless, decided that the Fontana family ran to insanity at great heights; Ralph laughed as he turned away from the window, smoothing the hair at his temples. ''Kid was crying. I fixed that. Surprised the pea-soup out of it. Say, that little oh-pear girl is some nice piece of fruit, isn't she? Van got her from England. Classy, just like the Crystal Phoenix."
Feeling like a peeping tomcat. Temple tiptoed to the window. Luckily, the au pair girl had her back to them, but the fussing infant propped over her shoulder was now grinning like a pumpkin.
"Let's skedaddle before we're arrested," Temple muttered, treading over the littered rooftop without a backward look.
Ralph Fontana soon caught up with her, but the tour was mostly over, except for a detour to the seventh floor. There Ralph escorted her with pride and fanfare to a door bearing the number 713.
"This is just a regular room," Temple noted.
"Hey, it's not regular at all. It's a suite," Ralph reported.
"So it's a suite. Lots of hotels have them."
"Not like this." Ralph flourished an old-fashioned pass key from his breast pocket.
Obviously, this was the tour's big moment. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, at the same time drawing Temple behind him as if to protect her from the contents.
What was this? An unauthorized drug raid on an unsuspecting guest?