"It is never too late for us, my love," I tell her. "I have come to free you for a night on the town."
The Divine Yvette puckers up her adorable face. "I would so love a few hours of frolic and sight-seeing, but my mistress is exceedingly distraught, and I dare not leave her at this critical moment."
"You will excuse me for saying so, but Miss Savannah Ashleigh is often distraught about this or that. If one were to put off one's own pleasures to wait for her to experience a few of her own, I am sure that one's whiskers would go white and drop off in the interim."
'That may be true, Louie, but this is a genuine crisis. My mistress visited her Las Vegas plastic surgeon yesterday and apparently the news is rather dire. I believe that he found it too soon for another laser wrinkle lift, but gravity and the desert sun wait for no woman." The Divine Yvette sighs. "These are the times I thank Bast that I was born in furs, not flesh. I would have to be shaved for any wrinkles to be visible."
"Do not speak of such a travesty! I have heard of a case where a cat was shaved, and the result was not a pretty sight."
Yvette's plumed tail pats the down comforter beside her. "But stay and talk awhile, Louie.
My mistress is drowning her wrinkles in the astringent called alcohol, which must be taken internally. She gets even more boring than usual at such a time. I do long for a good bit of street gossip."
I leap into plavr beside her, letting my tail entwine with hers. She stretches out long front gams and bats her eyelashes. I know that I would be getting the blue-green light if the rotten Miss Savannah were not in the adjacent chamber. I wish on her the sudden explosion of a nasty zit--
that ought to have her sprinting to the hotel health club for a facial.
"So," asks the Divine Yvette, "where would we have gone if we could have escaped for a few precious hours together?"
"Nothing earth-shaking," I reply.
"Good." The Devine Yvette's ruff shakes wholeheartedly. "I spend most of my time with my mistress in the better neighborhoods of Los Angeles. I face a good deal of earth-shaking there, and prefer a more quiet climate."
"Exactly, my dear. I thought we could take another peaceful ride on the Love Moat. I could show you the spot where my signature shoes were found. Then we could trot around to the Crystal Phoenix, where I have an in, and we could nibble on steak tartare fresh from the meat cleaver of Chef Song. For dessert, we could hie to the Desert Inn, to relax in there A-one spa are, where we could give each other body massages and finish up with a tongue-bath."
"Sounds divine! Perhaps my mistress's unhappiness is somewhat catching, but I find myself out of sorts too, and evincing strange, obsessive behaviors, like sudden headaches and a cettain mental restlessness. I cannot think what is the matter with me!"
"Nothing is the matter with you," I pronounce confidently. "You are perfect! And you would be even more perfect were you able to slip away for some feline-to-feline resuscitation."
"Your confidence is so inspiring, Louie. I do not doubt that I am being infected by my mistress's discontent. Does your mistress not transfer her burdens to you?"
"Not really, but then I am not around long enough to function as a transferee. And Miss Temple's burdens are pretty small stuff, just like her, though she would be furious to hear me say it. Fortunately, we do not speak the same language."
"Yes, it is a comfort not to have to speak to humans. Imagine how they would burden us with their troubles if they thought we could understand them. It is bad enough that they sniffle into our freshly washed fur on occasion."
"Indeed. But their weakness is part of their charm."
We are thus contemplating human behavior in perfect harmony, each emitting a gentle, back-of-the-throat purr, when we hear a clatter and crash and our ears flatten as one. I leap to the floor in one cheetah-size bound.
I am not a second too late. The bedroom door is flung fully open to frame the black-draped figure of Miss Savannah Ashleigh. She stamps her foot on the thick carpeting, nearly breaking off a heel on her satin slides.
"Imagine!" she tells the room and the Divine Yvette (and me). 'That rat had the nerve to turn me down. What an ego! Who does he think he is? Who does he think he can get, at his age and with his track record? We go way back, but I'm not about to forgive a snub on the grounds of old times."
She stomps her way to the bedside table that holds a clock, and picks it up to squint at the tiny dial inside double rings of blue rhinestones. "However, the night is young yet," she snarls.
"When Mr. Darren Big Deal finds out how hard it is for an aging Romeo to find the proper Juliet in Las Vegas nowadays, perhaps he'll settle for Hamlet's mother!"
I can see that I had better scram, especially when Miss Savannah Ashleigh starts mixing metaphors. I slither out to the other room when her back is turned, and find a sheltered hunkering-down spot near the entrance doors. Surely someone will come or go one of these hours, and then I will skip out the door to my former freedom.
"Ooh, Mommy's sweetest 'ittle pussums," I hear crooned from the bedroom. "You would never let Mommy down, 'ould you? No, no, no."
I am afraid that the Divine Yvette is getting one of those saltwater baths that are so damaging to her fur coat.
Will humans never learn the proper care of their boon companions?
I think on other dark and disagreeable subjects for a couple of hours. Imagine my surprise when the person that finally frees me rustles, fully dressed to kill, from the bedroom. Miss Savannah Ashleigh does not even look down, her nose is so high in the air. She jerks open the door and struts out of it. I have to be quick to avoid getting a tailectomy as I bound through the door with her.
Well, I was this close to the Divine Yvette, and once again her puzzling devotion to her straw-headed mistress has foiled our perfect union.
I am beginning to think that the Divine Yvette and I are not meant to be. That is such a depressing thought that I hurry back to the Circle Ritz, planning to snuffle on Miss Temple Barr's shoulder.
Chapter 16
Fly on the Wall
Eleven o'clock on a Sunday night, and the ConTact help lines were still.
Matt sat facing the three white sides of his cubicle. He watched a fly crawl over the hole -
studded soundproof tiles, adding a random element to the perfect pattern of perforations. Matt kept waiting for the fly to crawl into one of the round black holes, and disappear.
But it didn't. Its splay-footed legs moved delicately over the aisles of white between the perforations and never made a misstep. If only people had the discriminating instincts of a common fly!
But they didn't, and that's what made his job interesting, even on tedious nights like this.
"Want me to call you up and pour out my troubles?"
Matt leaned back in his stenographic chair to eye the only other counselor on duty right then: Bennie Cordova.
Bennie was grinning over the plastic frames of his glasses, highly magnifying half lenses that made the bags under his sixtyish eyes look like they were packed for an around-the -world cruise.
"You have troubles?" Matt joked back.
No doubt Bennie--whose baptismal name was Bienvenido, "Welcome"--had been a cool guy during his sixties heyday, probably thumbing his nose at authority when it wasn't busy inhaling pot. If anyone had told Bennie then that his dark hair would gray and retreat screaming from his forehead with the inevitability of an ebbing tide, that he'd someday wear grandpa glasses and cardigan sweaters to work on a chilly Las Vegas night, Bennie probably would have beat him up. Now, time had beaten up Bennie, and his knees and neck were stiff, but he s till had his sixties insouciance. No sweat, man. Stuff happens, even growing old instead of up.
"Everybody has troubles, man. What about yours?"