"She was a new mother at the time," Louise returns sourly.
If I had been grooming that longhaired vermin trap of a tail, I would be sour too.
"But, then," she adds for good measure, "what would you know of new mothers? You are the type to hit on, and run."
"Ah, but I am no longer offspring-enabled," I point out.
"No thanks to any doing of yours."
"Circumstances have deprived me of parental expectations, it is true, but I will make the best of it."
"I am sure you will, but not with me."
"Louise! I am shocked. You insist that I am your father. Although I disagree, I must respect your misapprehension. I would never make unfatherly overtures toward you."
"No, you never would, because you know you would get a five-claw salute to the kisser." She shrugs the rusty black fur-piece over her shoulders into neater order. "I do not know why you suddenly wish to share my company, since you deny being my father to the death and you know that I would lacerate your lousy hide to the bone if you tried anything funny with me."
"With my luscious little redheaded roommate, Miss Temple Barr, working on a long-range project for the Phoenix, I feel we should get to know each other better. Bury the hatchet.
Cooperate like the trained professionals we are. We will no doubt be seeing more of each other."
"I am professional. You are a blot on the seedy Las Vegas landscape. A very large blot."
Just because the streetlight behind me flares like a setting sun and I cast a long shadow that blurs the edges of my true, muscle-sculpted form is no reason to affront my size. I do not call her a "puny, anorexic pip-squeak."
By now the foot traffic behind us has picked up. Human feet and legs and body odor crowd us to the brink. Everyone in Las Vegas knows that the Oasis Hotel's "Battle of the Barges" occurs on the hour around the clock.
Being the thoughtful escort I am (even of an ungrateful brat), I have arranged that we see the more dramatic night-time spectacle, held at my signature midnight hour.
"It was thoughtful of you," Midnight Louise admits after turning and delivering a blood-curdling snarl to an encroaching human ankle, "to invite me to the show held at the time that celebrates my new name. Much as I hate to bear a version of your name, at least 'Midnight Louise' is a hair better than just plain 'Midnight.' Humans have no imagination when it comes to naming black individuals of other species. Where did the 'Louie' in your name come from, anyway?"
I fan my nails, which bear an ebony sheen that would do a Steinway concert grand piano proud.
"Some suggest I was named for my distinctive singing voice."
"You do sometimes sound like Louis Armstrong with a tracheotomy."
"Others say I was plucked off the street as a kit and gotten drunk on beer by a group of frat boys, so the name of their song got pasted onto me."
'The infamous 'Louie, Louie,'" Louise growls. "I wish I had been there. I would have signed, sealed and nailed those creeps for introducing alcoholic substances to a helpless minor of another species."
I am touched by her concern, but cannot let a misapprehension linger. 'These were Eastern frat boys, my dear. I was not named after that low-brow drunken bar chorus you mentioned, but rather after 'the Whiffenpoof Song' so dear to Yale University undergraduates."
" 'Whiffenpoof!" Louise practically rolls over the wharf's edge laughing. "Whiffenpoof? What a wimpy name."
"I believe the line is: 'and to the place where Louie dwells, to dear old Temple Bar.'"
"If so, it certainly was a prophetic naming. I believe that your Miss Temple is a female of accomplishment worthy of admiration despite her inexplicable association with you, but isn't she a little young to be celebrated in song by drunk undergraduates of Eastern educational establishments?"
"I notice a distinct improvement in your vocabulary level from associating with me, but unfortunately not in attitude. You are leaping to the erroneous conclusion, as usual. The
'Temple Bar' in the song is not a person, any more than Temple Bar' landing on Lake Mead is. It is a bar."
"Aha! I might have known."
"And 'Louie' is the esteemed proprietor of same."
"Are there any esteemed barkeepers?"
"Apparently in song."
"Speaking of keepers, you are right at least that Miss Temple will be haunting the Crystal Phoenix more of late. Groundbreaking has begun."
I cannot let Miss Louise's latest gratuitous dig go unplumbed. "Miss Temple Bar is not my keeper. I allow her to consider herself responsible for me--though that often entails odious or even torturous visits to the vet--but the fact is that I am the one who keeps her from disaster during her forays into crime and punishment."
Now that I have put Miss Louise in her place, I can inquire into the tidbit of news she has dropped like a guppy into a Great Lake. "So what ground are they breaking at my dear old stomping grounds?"
"They are tearing up the back lot for the latest theme scheme in town," she says, wetting a foremitt to stroke her airy eyebrows into place.
"Oh, yes. The Jersey Joe Jackson memorial ghost town and mine ride."
"The construction site is attracting the usual lowlifes."
I nod. Construction sites mean construction workers. And construction workers mean brown-bag lunches and fast-food wrappers and leftovers.
"I do not mind the homeless making discreet forays into the daily garbage, but the pickings also attract scavengers that cannot be tolerated at an upscale place like the Crystal Phoenix."
I nod again, as the foul word finally slips my lips. "Dogs."
'The occasional dog is all right as long as it does not whine and beg excessively. I am talking about packs."
"Dogs tend to congregate in cowardly gangs."
"I am talking wild dogs."
I lilt my luxurious brows without bothering to groom them first. Miss Midnight Louise is a petite thing, for all her big mouth, and I cannot see her facing off a pack of wild dogs.
"If you mean coyote clan, I could put out the word on the sand that they are to steer clear of the Crystal Phoenix."
"Like they would listen to you."
"Hey. I handled a tricky case for them. For the head coyote, in fact. Mr. Big."
"I have not heard of a Mr. Big in the coyote clan around here."
"This was the Big Mr. Big. The one the Paiute Indians call The Trickster God. He can take on all shapes and all colors and all species. Believe me, he is one awesome dude."
"Oh, Daddio. You and this New Age kick of yours. Cats of your generation are such an old-fashioned and superstitious lot. Coyote clan is a gang of nervy, nomadic scavengers who may be pretty wily, but are basically garbage collectors and public nuisances. My sole problem with them is that the only cat they have the sense to respect is a desert puma. I have to make my point--" here, she flicks out a set of dainty but razor-sharp shivs "--with them over and over.
They are beginning to regard four tracks across the snout as some sort of gang initiation rite and are sending all their young toughs to me. You would think I am a tattoo service."
"You need not act like a puma to make your point. They will listen to me without me lifting a shiv. I tell you, they owe me. I will come over some night and tell them to get lost."
"No! I have enough to patrol with all the construction mess without looking out for you too.
Besides, are you not going to be bouncing in and out of town as a fast-food endorser?"
'That remains to be seen. Miss Temple unmasked a killer at the advertising agency that is deciding the spokescat sweepstakes."
"Not good PR." Louise's jet-black brow frowns. "I hope she does not find any dead bodies in the Phoenix's construction ashes. We do not need the bad publicity."