Kit cruised up, both hands brimming with goblets of white wine. "She just writes romance, remember? She doesn't necessarily know a thing about men, or marriage."
"I suppose that's an expert speaking." Temple took a glass and sipped before she forgot herself and spit. "What a-- Too bad I don't use those words about other women."
"Oh, make an exception. I know just what you mean." Kit turned to beam on the new, adjusted scene: Sharon Rose in bloom amid her admiring wreath of fans, ignored by nearby husband Herbert, who was sticking up like a transplanted stalk of hollyhock desperately in need of water, or something much stronger.
"Her Herb," Temple repeated in the same pointed, trendy tone of voice.
"Are you stuttering, dear?"
"No, I'm trying to fathom that paranoid, possessive mentality. She must be insecure."
"Brilliant deduction."
"Still, why me? A stranger. What does she do to women who actually know her?"
"Grinds them into the ground with teeth-gritted pronouncements about how they should do everything from family rearing to writing a sex scene. And she smiles every moment. She'll go after men like a pit bull, too. I've seen her trotting around conventions with a whipped-dog male agent on one side and a humiliated female editor on the other, both two steps behind. That lady has a genius for dysfunctional living, actually. That's the book she should write: How to Whip Ass and Stomp Egos for Fun and Profit. "
"I could see someone murdering her. "
"No such luck. Nor does her husband strike me as the type to knock off a cover hunk, do you think?"
"Never! Why?"
"Oh, I happened to see the sales cover flat of Sharon Rose's new book before I left New York, Satin and Sagebrush. And it was Cheyenne's last, best moment, believe me. A smashing painting of him in cowboy gear, minus shirt and pants. Her 'personal pen pal' notes on the inside back bubbled about how fun it was to witness a cover shoot with a rising star."
"Then you came here and recognized him?"
"When I saw him dead. And undressed. He was reclining on the cover."
"That's a new angle. I suppose you didn't want to tell me until I had experienced the Rose of Sharon personality close up and personal. Ouch! Do you suppose I'll have the stomach to approach her later and ask some pointed questions?"
"It depends on how badly you want to know the answers."
While they talked quietly, Temple had been vaguely aware of a civilian, a woman in a modest knit top and slacks, standing, two or three feet away, out of earshot but clearly waiting.
"Yes?" Temple said.
She approached diffidently. "I saw you talking to Miss Rose. She seems awful nice."
"Hmm," said Temple in that politely noncommittal way the British have mastered since the time of the Norman invasion.
"I'm much too nervous to ask her for an autograph. Maybe I can just ask you about her. Is she as wonderful as her books?"
The woman's eyes were shining, as was her unpowdered nose. She would never be a bestselling novelist who touted down-home virtues while she ran roughshod over other people with a cattle prod.
How do you tell hero-worshipers that their idol has feet of corrugated steel?
Temple didn't. "She was lovely, just lovely." Temple smiled.
The woman nodded and floated off to the fringes of Sharon Rose's admirers.
"A legend is born," Kit muttered. "We all know what she's really like, having felt her bite as well as her bark, but we have to hear readers coo over her as if she were a plaster saint. And she doesn't write worth a damn, either. That's show biz. No justice."
"It would be nice if Sharon Rose had murdered Cheyenne."
"Nice, but pure fiction I fear. She doesn't need to kill anyone; she shrivels their spirits while they're still living, like her poor husband."
"Opposites do attract," Temple mused as they cruised through the mob looking for the blue-green neon of Electra's hair.
"Or maybe you're attracted to opposites. Your two guys look pretty diametrically different."
"I wish you wouldn't call them 'my two guys' as if I had a harem! Everything's on hold, at the moment, with everyone. Nobody is nobody's anything."
"Maybe you had better not try writing a romance. You don't make sense when you get excited, and that's fatal in the sex scenes."
"Fine," said Temple. "I'm more interested in fatalities than sex at the moment, anyway. Now let's find Electra so we can watch this show get on the road."
Kit kept meek silence as they do-si-doed around the room, stopping whenever someone recognized Kit or, more likely, the pseudonym on her name badge.
"Sulah Savage! I love your books!" the typical greeting would begin, an approach guaranteed to put a seraphic smile on the face of the hailed author. "When's the next 'Love's Inquisition' book coming out? I loved Reynaldo's story."
"My Spanish epic," Kit murmured modestly to Temple as they moved on, leaving an excited fan in their wake flashing Kit's phony signature at all her friends.
"Doesn't it feel funny to sign a made-up name?" Temple asked.
"Heavens no! I made it up myself. Besides, it's like playing a role.
When I appear as Sulah Savage, I'm in character as Sulah Savage. It's liberating to have an official alter ego."
"This is all about role-playing, isn't it?" Temple said.
"I told you, this is bookselling. Hype. Theater."
"Maybe the murderer was playing a role too. Or Cheyenne was. One he hadn't counted on playing."
"Of course Cheyenne was playing a role. That was his job."
"His job." Temple thought about that too. "I need to see more of what a cover hunk's job is like."
"Well, forget that for now and grab a chair, because Electra has been nice enough to save a couple seats at that table just ahead, and I hear the podium mike being tested by amateurs." A horrible screeching momentarily froze the assemblage before fading. "Showtime!"
"I've got to work on a good pseudonym," Electra said as soon as they sat down. "I've been talking to readers and they all say the name is very important."
"Electra Lark is a fabulous pen name!" Kit argued indignantly. "Not so long it will run off a book cover, but different as well as pretty."
"Everybody says it sounds like a pseudonym." Electra took a heartfelt slurp through the straw in her Blue Hawaii. "Besides, it isn't alliterative."
"All that alliteration is regarded as hokey today," Kit said. "You forget that I've been doing this for ages. I'd never use Sulah Savage now, but it's too late."
"What were you thinking of using?" Temple asked Electra.
"I've always wanted to be a Vivian."
"Well," Kit said, "we all know I didn't want to be an Ursula." She eyed Temple. "Did you ever cherish visions of another name?"
Since Temple Kinsella was the only speculating Temple had ever done in that area, and it was hardly a harmonious name, or appropriate to mention now, she kept quiet. Then some imp of unconscious invention put the name Temple Devine in her head. She swallowed her wine wrong, laughing the entire time as Kit and Electra pounded her on the back.
On the low, long staging area, spotlights were brightening.
"I think I'd keep Temple Barr," she whispered when she could talk again.
They both nodded, no longer interested, eyes focused on the narrow area of light in the darkened ballroom.
There followed the usual opening ceremony rituals at conferences everywhere, only with a romance novel twist. The president of G.R.O.W.L. welcomed the authors and readers. The president of Fabrizio's fan club came up and presented him with a sterling flacon for his new cologne, "Macho Man."
"Temple's been picked up by him," Kit leaned across her to tell Electra.
"No!" Electra leaned across Temple from the other side. "I've heard that he accosts women in elevators." She frowned. "I've also heard that he really doesn't care for women at all. So I guess both rumors can't be true."
By the time the two had finished hashing over Breezy's inclinations and/or lack of them, the model himself was gone, golden locks, silver flacon and all that muscle.