He finally looked up at her, worried.
"You really considered sacrificing yourself to this woman for me?" Temple was rhapsodic.
"That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. But sex is much too good to ever just 'get it over with.' Or to spend on an uncaring stranger. You're being human, Matt. Insecure and anxious and a little competitive. That's a very good sign."
"If this is progress, I may not survive it."
"Teenagers do."
"Are you and Max surviving it?"
That one she couldn't answer.
Chapter 15
To Yvette, in Prison
Miss Temple may be prepared to mope her days and nights away, but I do not intend to stick around to be her crying pillow. Saltwater has never done a thing for my topcoat.
Also, I am not torn between two felines. There is only one polestar in my cat heaven, one feline in my firmament, one star on my astral plane, one comet on my tail and one meteor in my mind.
I refer, of course, to the Divine Yvette.
These last few days of working together have been sadly lacking. Here we are, the image of onscreen togetherness, yet off-screen we are kept behind convent grilles (okay, it is just a carrier grille, but the effect is the same).
Although we are to emote next week in various "location" shots around town, I am no longer willing to settle for a whisker-rub under six-thousand kilowatts of spotlight. I decide to break my darling out of her unnatural confinement for a night on the town.
This will be one of my hardest assignments.
By keeping my ears open while appearing to doze, I have learned that Yvette and her mistress, Miss Savannah Ashleigh, are sharing a suite at the Goliath, paid for by the Yummy Tum-tum-tummy/Free-to-be-Feline/A La Cat conglomerate. (Can you imagine, one company makes all these different products? Hard to believe that the loathsomely nutritional Free-to-be-Feline and the tasty Yummy Tum-tum-tummy spring from the same corporate culture, so to speak.)
I am most indignant on my mistress's behalf. Simply because she is a Las Vegas resident, she is being bilked out of expensive accommodations during the shoot. I think the cat-glop people owe her at least a good dinner out. But that is her problem.
Mine is more insurmountable, quite literally. I will have to breech the Goliath security system (which I hope consists only of stone knives, in keeping with their ancient-civilization theme), discover which rooms house my petite princess and spring her without anyone being the wiser. And let he who casts the first stone be called Michelangelo's David.
Getting out of the Circle Ritz is the usual snap. Getting over to the Goliath on the Strip is the usual car-, bus- and van-dodging trip. Getting into the Goliath is the usual hanging out by the kitchen service door and darting in under cover of a cart. Just call me cat A La Carte.
Luckily, I am making my moves at night, when my dark topcoat makes me all but invisible.
Unluckily, the lobby is one of those over-lit, open expanses of white marble, saffron carpet, gilded lilies and upholstered furniture so pale that a shaded-silver Persian cat hair would show up on it, not to mention my own svelte dark form.
So I attach myself to various arriving parties, dashing along in the shadow of their duffel bags and rolling valets, wishing for a brief, minor power failure from Hoover Dam to the Valley of Fire.
Besides, such a power outage might inspire some work of cinematic art. If they made such a fuss about the night the lights went out in Dixie and the night the power failed in New York City (resulting in a higher birthrate nine months later), think of what would happen if the lights went out in Vegas, the city that never nods off? Now there is a disaster-flick plot for any bright bulb who wants to take it from me.
Some might say that I am a trifle selfish for wishing a town wide blackout so that I can visit an amour, but whoever they are, they are not here and I do not worry about them.
What I worry about is finding Miss Yvette's room number, particularly since she is not registered under her own name.
As in most Vegas hostelries, the registration desk is a hornet's nest of activity.
However, since this hotel, in particular, wishes to convey an atmosphere of desert luxe, a number of potted palms are sprinkled around the tomblike lobby. The pots actually serve my purposes better than the palms. It is from the shade of just such a gargantuan container that I spot a subspecies on the premises.
This is a terrier known as a Westie, a brighter-than-the-usual-dim-bulb-dog, that is also something of a terror, being from a rather bossy breed. I ankle over to the party, which also consists of a man and a woman who are checking to see if they have any mail. Ah, veterans. Just what I need. I force myself to rub ingratiatingly on the Westie's furry white side.
"Hi, fella. Been staying at this dump long?"
I get a growl and a snort (a Scottish snort; I recognize the accent from my association with Baker and Taylor, the Scottish fold cats, on a previous case)." Tis no dump, you blathering numbskull, an' verra expensive as weel."
"Just wondered if you spotted a sleek little number who travels in pink. Shaded-silver Persian a little darker than yourself."
"More of your sort? I had no idea the hotel provided so much sport for its canine guests. I have, in fact, sniffed some sort of vermin being carted to and fro. I took it for an Angora guinea pig."
With great self-control, I refrain from turning Westie into Scarface, from now to eternity, for calling the Divine Yvette vermin.
"And where did you see this creature coming and going?" I ask sweetly.
"In the elevator. A great imposition. Your kind smells, you know."
"So does yours," I growl back, "and if you want to retain a sniffer to smell with, I would watch your lip."
I dart away before the little sucker can do me any damage, leaving him bouncing up and down on his short little legs and barking up a storm.
"Wescott, be quiet!" his mistress urges, looking around to see what might have got him yammering.
Of course I am invisible behind my palm pot once more, and a good thing, because I think if Wescott spies me, he will take off after me and drag his mistress right along for the ride, he is that mad. There is nothing like a Scot for making much over nothing.
Vermin, indeed!
I straighten my coat sleeves, then ponder another route to my destination. Elevator encounters hardly betray the floor and room number of my sweetie.
I manage to dive beneath the long marble registration desk, which is done up to resemble a banquet table decorated with goblets of fake wine and dishes of wax grapes set here and there.
The reservation staff is dashing back and forth attending to a long line of eager guests, and I have to keep a sharp eye on all five of my extremities. There are few occasions that I envy human beings anything, but the facility for strutting around on two legs, with only ten toes to get stepped on, does sometimes make me a teensy bit jealous.
I pace back and forth, dodging the swift and unpredictable footsteps of the personnel. I hear many names bandied about above me, but none that make my whiskers quiver: "Costner, Branagh, Schwarzenegger . . ." These bunch of nobodies are wasting the desk clerks' time when the staff could be answering inquiries for Savannah Ashleigh, the movie star.
Alas, the bell does not toll for her, proba bly because she is already checked in. And the Goliath has forty-eight hundred rooms. I will check out each and every one, if I must, but it will put me sadly behind schedule. At this rate, I will see Yvette on the set Tuesday sooner than I will find hide or silver hair of her here.
I have resigned myself to curling up on a box of Goliath maps (the hotel is so big each guest gets a map to follow around), and am yawning widely when my ears come out of the temporary deafness a good yawn induces to hear the magic word: "... leigh."