Either I have a personal problem, or there is a snake or flat tire on the premises. I opt for the snake.
When I turn my head and look down at the floor behind the bar, I am confronting a pair of gleaming, red predatory eyes.
Not even a Sears catalogue could have delivered so fortuitously, back in the days when Sears had catalogues, which only goes to show how many lives I have enjoyed.
“Missster Midnight Louie,” the apparition breathes. “Misss Hyasssscinth,” I respond in kind.
My human hostess withdraws, fearing a hissing and spitting match.
Often an irresistible attraction looks like that at the onset. “Fancy meeting you here,” she says.
“Nothing fancy about it. I came because I thought this was the kind of flashy joint you would be hanging about.”
“So you think I am ‘flashy.’ “
“Not at all. I think you are a show biz kind of girl.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. Your career is on the upswing. Not only a cable sci-fi show, but some possibility of a product endorsement. Obviously, you have your paw on the pulse of the modern entertainment media.”
“And you want to resume your role as a cat food spokesman?”
“I would not be averse to it.”
“So you had nothing to do with that spitfire who invaded the Cloaked Conjuror’s headquarters and dared to cross claws with me?”
‘That chit? Obviously a low-class upstart. I did try to prevent that grudge match, you recall.”
“I recall that you offered to go some rounds with me yourself.”
“Can you blame me?” I ask, flexing my brow whiskers like Tom Selleck. We both are luxuriously haired, you know.
“Are you saying your offer was a gallantry, rather than a challenge?”
“Gallantry is always a challenge,” I respond.
“So you have no ulterior motive in making my acquaintance.”
I allow my ears to flatten and my expression to become downcast. “Alas, I do have an ulterior motive. I cannot resist a foxy female.”
“Then come down here and we will do a little line dancing.”
Of course I cannot resist an invitation, or a challenge, from an unrelated female.
I leap down, only to find that Miss Hyacinth has pulled a disappearing act. Not so strange for a feline doll who assists in a magic show. I decide to play her game of hide-and-seek, so I ankle out from behind the bar, where I am at the mercy of the gyrating feet on the dance floor.
No sign of Miss Hyacinth, but a lot of foot-stomping isgoing on. In fact, I am being subjected to such a fever of Saturday night feet, even in the relatively static arena of the bar area, that I finally loft back atop the mirrored black surface, which reflects the constellations of panicked neon mares in the heights above us all.
Now I understand what I am experiencing: a kind of psychic stampede. To my keyed-up senses, it is as if these humans are a cat colony in communal heat. Thanks to the efforts of the Ladies of Spaying, among my kind that sort of thing is dying out, but here it is in full, rampant bloom.
I strut along the bar in a direction opposite to my first fling up here, finding dudes wearing backward baseball caps (loathsome fashion!) and the fedora as occasional as the shaved head, knocking back obscure beers, high-octane lemonades, and trendy coolers.
Not many dames line up at the bar on this side, as it seems to be a dudely kind of place, what with a TV perched above the liquor-bottle wallpaper blaring out some sports contest, but one lady does attract my notice.
She is sitting artistically behind a martini glass, that sublime inverted pyramid shape that spells sophistication and a nodding acquaintance with my ancestors’ favored sepulcher.
I ankle over, rubbing against a half-dozen sweaty long-necks on the way.
What attracts me is the luminous color that fills her classic martini glass. Ah! I cannot rhapsodize enough. It is the liquid, lurid green of the Queen of Cat’s eyes, Bastet herself. It is the Green Fairy of absinthe gone nouveau noir. It is as modern as the blinkers on a well-bred Chartreuse cat.
The lady in question, and in a place like this, the “lady” is always in question, attracts my attention next.
Other than Miss Temple, a feisty ginger-bit of a Tortie to me, I am not much impressed by human pulchritude.
But this lady is well-matched to her sour green-apple martini. Her hair is as black as the sheen in my coat at its most well-licked. Her eyes are the blue-green of the Divine Yvette, my absent ladylove, at her most imperious Persian princesshood. Her lips on the short straw stuck in the opaque drink like a tap into a poisoned apple skin, are, well, to coin a phrase, grapefruit ruby-red. Her skin is the dead-white of an albino and hairless Sphinx cat.
All in all, she is a Technicolor treat.
I boldly stop before her and yawn, so she can observe my glossy black coat, so like her hair … my blood-red tongue, so like her lips … my lettuce-green eyes, so like her poison of choice … my shark-white teeth so like her pale, satin skin.
I am eye-to-eye … indeed, eyetooth to eyetooth with, of course … the living inspiration for the sketch of Kathleen O’Connor, aka Kitty the Cutter. (My thankfully absent roommate does have such a way with words!) They say a cat may look at a queen. They also call unfixed female cats queens. They also call jealous and vicious women “cats.” I think I have Miss Kitty’s number.
I stare into Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s aquamarine eyes.
“What have we here?” she asks loudly enough that only I may hear. “A tomcat on the town? Would you like a drink?”
I do not respond, but she raises a pale finger topped by a scarlet nail, and in two shakes of an innocent’s lamb’s tail, the bartender presents me with a saucer of the same vile green liquid she imbibes.
I deign to run a paw across it, sniff the result, then shake the excess onto the black-glass bar.
Miss Kitty laughs. She has claimed even my kind’s name, as if evil had an inbred feline bent. I owe her for that one too.
“You Las Vegas boys,” she says soft and low, “are all alike. Thinking you know something, but too … discriminating … for the real world.”
If I know who she is, does she know who I am? How could she? I am an undercover operative. I am as discreet as a poodle in Paris. What could she know about me?
She leans close, sips from her straw, blows the words at me as if she expects me to understand. And I do.
“Tell your friends—and I know you have some, big boy—Ihave some myself. Tell your friends that I said ‘Hello.’ I don’t know quite how you will go about telling them that. Perhaps it is just as well. Anyway, kiss them good-bye for me.”
I have a thousand questions, most of them starting with, “Are you really leaving my associates alone?”
I do not admit to human “friends.” (Miss Temple, of course, is different. She is much more than a friend. She is my tender little filet of solemate.) And I certainly do not “talk” to humans, friend or foe. I stand alone among my kind in knowing more of humanity than I would want to. This particular piece of it I would like to toss into the pool in front of the Mirage’s volcano attraction during mid-explosion, but even though she is a petite little doll she is too big to throw for a loop here or anywhere else.
So I content myself with hissing in her voodoo martini and stalking off without a word.
Sometimes it is better to leave to fight another day.
Chapter 32
… Wizard!
Another whip-crack sound of an unseen door opening. Night air and parking lot lights slapped Max’s senses silly.
He felt like a tomb robber slipping out of Cheops’ pyramid at Giza. A dark figure urged him forward, and soon both were ensconced in … an aged Volkswagen Beetle.
Shades of Tomb Raider? Hardly.
Yet, behind them, shadows of the Synth were pouring from the black pyramid of Neon Nightmare while the titular horse was screaming in neon rainbows above it all.
His guide revved the VW and putt-putted them into a dark corner of the lot, where they parked between the looming screens of a Ford Exasperator and a Lincoln Aggravator.