I can resist no longer. I must sneeze. Being the gentleman that I am, I turn my head—and look up to see the dancing woman suspended above me, her melancholy, tilted face looking down on the reunion of Midnight Louie and the Divine Yvette with the open, empty eyes of a forsaken puppet.
The puppetmaster who abandoned her will rue the moment he meddled with the Divine Yvette, or my name is not Midnight Louie.
9
Perfect Recall
“Brother John, I’m scared.”
“So am I. You’ve got to leave.”
“Five more days. If I can just make it for five more days! I’m trying to be so quiet, so perfect, but sometimes that makes him worse.”
“You can’t win with him, whatever you do. Except by leaving.”
“Yeah, but I’ve held on this long. Thirty-five-years-old last April. You’d think I would have learned something by now.”
“You have. You’ve got an economic way out now. All you have to do is take it.”
“They hang on, though, just like the last one. They treat you like scum, call you a slut, but the minute you try to leave, you’re suddenly too good to let go of.”
“He’s sick. He needs you to be sick, too.”
“But I’m not gonna let him drag me down, not anymore. Damn man. He’s not nice like you. He doesn’t listen, just... slam, bang, pow.”
“I’m paid to listen.”
“That’s not why you do it, though, is it? That’s all right, don’t answer. We’re supposed to be talkin’ about me, not you. Me and my ‘problem.’ It’d be nice to meet you, though, someday when I’m outa here, Brother John. Maybe I’ll call you up and we can have lunch and talk about the bad old days.”
“I don’t think—”
“Probably rules against it. Maybe it’s better. I’ve told you things that make me ashamed.”
“You don’t have to feel ashamed for what someone else does.”
“No, and it’s him, isn’t it? Always him. Always mean, always running me down. They always seem like Prince Charming at first, and then, Godzilla. Maybe Godzilla’s too nice. He’s been real quiet lately. He hates what I’m doing Saturday. He wants to stop me. I can see it building up. He’s yelling about the country going to hell and no chance for white men and women are nothing but whores—why does he hate so much?”
“He’s afraid some of what he hates might be inside him.”
“Him? Afraid? Excuse me for laughing. But yeah, maybe laughing will help. He’s pathetic, really, big son of a gun with nothing better to do than beat up on some little woman. He’s scum. Guess you can’t comment on that. I’m not going to be afraid of him anymore. I won’t!”
“The best thing would be to leave now. Tonight.”
“Oh, not tonight. Not tomorrow night, or tomorrow night, or tomorrow night. But a couple nights after that, yeah. Whether I win or not. Yeah, I’m gone. Thanks. I feel less... nervous now. If I didn’t have you to call, and be silly and scared to, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“I’m here to help.”
“You do, you do. You help me not be afraid all the time.”
10
Vamp of Savannah
First thing Tuesday morning, the aqua Storm idled silently at the driveway leading to the Goliath Hotel, the engine struck with what Temple imagined was automotive awe.
Against the bright blue sky loomed the silhouette of a man straddling the road and sidewalk—a giant three stories tall. Between his braced legs must pass pedestrian and passenger alike. Temple gazed through the deep-tinted windshield at gargantuan thighs vanishing into the shadow of what charitably could be called a kilt, though it more resembled a sumo wrestler’s diaper.
Lines about “that colossal wreck,” Shelley’s fallen statue of Ozymandias in the poem of the same title, filled her head. The actual inspiration for this overblown anthropomorphic archway was the Colossus of Rhodes, a lost wonder of the ancient world. Beyond the huge figure sprawled the garish bulk of the Goliath Hotel, a Theme Park from Hyperbole dedicated to the purging of any iota of good taste impertinent enough to rear its modest head within view of the Goliath’s blissfully gauche patrons.
Temple tapped the Storm’s gas pedal. The sleek little car whisked under the colossus and up the sweeping drive (hotel drives in Las Vegas are compelled by law to sweep). It stopped under an entry canopy lined with yawning ribs of mirrored copper that reminded Temple of the whale in Pinocchio about to devour the unwary. This was as apt an image for the entryway to a Las Vegas hotel-casino as any.
Eight a.m. sharp, read her Big Ben-size watch face.
“I’ll be getting a ramp pass from hotel PR,” she told the uniformed valet who leaped to open the Storm’s door.
“Uniformed” was overdoing it. Valets at the Goliath wore gilt sandals, white linen Egyptian-style pleated kilts and short blond Bo Derek-dreadlock wigs. Tens, unfortunately, they were not.
Temple pushed the seat all the way back to wrestle her overloaded tote bag out of the car, then waited to see how the valet would maneuver that getup into the diminutive Storm. His efforts showed almost as much hairy leg as the colossus, but Temple was more interested in making sure his brass wristbands didn’t scratch the dashboard. She still had forty-three months left to pay on the car.
Although the Goliath Hotel was one of Las Vegas’s many landmarks, she hadn’t visited it since Max had performed here. She strode briskly through the glittering carousel of copper-framed revolving doors. Their glass panels showed outsiders a mirrored face, but gave insiders a see-through view. The click of her heels on the marble floor sounded reassuringly confident, as it always did.
Unlike most hotels, Las Vegas hostelries feature discreetly hidden registration desks. What welcomes guests is not the bellman, but ringing ranks of slot machines and the chime of quarters washing down durable but greedy stainless-steel throats.
Temple blinked and took off her dark glasses while her eyes adjusted to the deliberately dim interior. Gambling Meccas cultivate an eternal three a.m. atmosphere, the better to lure visiting Goldilocks into trying to find the “just right” slot or craps table. “If you don’t succeed, try, try again” was truly the house motto.
She crossed the carpet—burgundy imprinted with camel-colored... er, camels—aware of massive chandeliers glimmering above her, of slot machines spitting out a silver lava of coins here and there for lucky players.
The dim and smoky cocktail area lay beyond the first circle of slot machines. Veiled waitresses shimmied among low divans and gilt camel-saddle cocktail tables. Beyond them tiny, gleaming fairy lights trimmed the bare trees that bordered the Goliath’s most infamous feature.
Temple paused beside it—a twenty-foot-wide waterway meandering through a cocktail lounge. At a velvet-roped landing, visitors could embark on an automated ride in miniature red-velvet-lined gondolas. For a few titillating seconds, the gondola route wound through an artificial cave with glow-in-the-dark stars dimpling a Styrofoam-rock ceiling. The attraction was called “The Love Moat.”
“Corny,” Temple pronounced under her breath with wistful disdain. Max had thought so, too. It hadn’t stopped either of them from embarking on a glide into the manufactured dark and a stolen kiss under cover of same.
She sighed and moved on, past a flight of plush-carpeted stairs kept off limits for now by showy red-velvet ropes—the entrance to the Sultan’s Palace Theater, where Max had performed. Finally she turned down a nondescript hallway, slipping with relief into the hotel’s functional areas. Her goal was the offices of Brad Mitchellson, head PR honcho.