"This is the best time of year to do this. Cooler." She had grabbed any old sandwich from the van and joined them in munching. Nothing united strangers like a common appetite, which was the behavioral fact behind everything from sports fans to twelve-step recovery programs.
They nodded, chewing, as Temple found a dusty but unoccupied fender and tried to hop up on it.
"Let me take that," another fender-sitter offered, relieving her of the wrapped sandwich so she could use both hands to boost herself up, as always. How humiliating!
Once installed, she drummed her soft heels against the truck's side like everyone else and munched without comment. Behind her Kmart sunglasses (she was always losing them), she summed the crew up in the thoroughly wicked detail she could exercise when no one else could see her eyes.
"What do you do for Domingo?"
Temple couldn't quite tell where the question had come from, given a scraggly circle of fourteen or so workers, but she noticed sly smiles and heard snickers as she looked over the group.
"You could call me a scout," she said finally. "I'm a Las Vegas PR freelancer, so I've been designated to ask potential flamingo beneficiaries for permission to adorn their frontage."
"Beneficiaries!" The snorted word came from a lanky guy wearing the expedition uniform: loose T-shirt and shorts, sports socks and expensive tennis shoes. "That's putting whipped cream on a rotten banana. The only entity one of these shebangs benefits is Domingo International."
More sniggers erupted among the burps as the crew downed soft drinks and beer.
Apparently Domingo's loyal followers expected him to have liaisons with any and every woman around.
"Really," she said. "An embarrassment of flamingos is great publicity for a coming attraction like this." She waved at the bare lot, large sign and cyclone fence that hailed forthcoming megaconstruction in Las Vegas. "But the established hotels can be ... unimpressed."
"Unimpressed? By Domingo? Shame on them!" The speaker was a sharp'nosed and mushy*
chinned woman, so tanned that the freckles blended on her arms and face.
Temple tilted her head to better catch the bitter under taste to the words. "How come you guys work for Domingo? It's hot, hard labor, and I bet you don't get paid much."
The lanky guy looked up from tearing into his Subway sandwich, w hich shed lettuce curls onto the barren ground.
"A season in hell with Domingo and French horns or spaghetti or flamingos looks good on our resumes. He's a worldwide figure and his stuff gets lots of media. We're all under- or post grad art students, and could use a little sex appeal on our vitae."
"So Domingo plays the part of professor on a field expedition?"
The silence that greeted this summation told Temple a lot. Exchanged glances told her more.
Domingo was a necessary evil in the face of the advantages of having worked for Domingo.
"Domingo doesn't teach; he uses."
The young woman who said that was poured into cutoff jeans and a tank top, and not to either garment's advantage. She was downing slices of pizza fast enough to add another fifty pounds to the overweight that crammed the clothes, but her angry black eyes were incisive.
"Bren-da!" The girl beside her didn't give the admonishment much energy.
This one was Domingo-meat if Temple had ever seen it: smooth gilded hair pulled back into a clip, California tan, pastel shorts and shirt that made her look cool as iced sherbet in Hades.
"You guys love to speculate about the Maestro's love life," Baywatch Blondie went on, "but he's really most interested in putting his energy into the project. Did you really look at what he came up with for this site? It'll be awesome. Some people have nothing to do when they're on a break but sit around and gossip."
Temple's lifted interrogatory eyebrow was wasted be hind her oversize shades. (She would never wear those icky little round frames, no matter how fashionable; they made her look like a twelve-year-old.) So she led the class forward to the next topic.
"I guess you workers get something out of it."
"Screwed," came from her left, another female voice.
Waves of uneasy laughter rippled the circle.
Temple studied the guy who had accused Domingo of using them. Despite his T-shirt's tenting graces, his adolescent overweight teetered on obesity. Thick glasses and a seriously wracked complexion didn't help.
The girl who had put the word "screwed" on the table was slim, earnest, and also bespectacled, though hers were the fashionable small round metal ones Temple abhorred. She looked and sounded like a woman scorned. If so, no wonder Domingo had dumped her; the wonder was that he had been interested in her in the first place. Or had he been? Young infatuations often steamroller older cautionary urges.
"Don't you guys like Domingo?" she asked as innocently as a thirty-year-old among twenty-somethings can manage.
The freckled woman sighed. "He's okay. A little full of himself, but that's his job."
"Self-appointed job," the lanky guy put in.
When he got up, the others also rose. Temple saw her prey slipping away, so she finished her ... ugh, had she really been eating a tongue sandwich? Luckily, her question-and-answer session had distracted her from such essentials as . . . taste and texture. Yuck.
"What about you?" The slender girl in round glasses stood before her, dusty arms crossed.
"What about me?"
"Are you this big fan of Domingo's, or just a hired hand, or a soon-to-be mistress or what?"
"Since none of the specifics above apply, I guess I'm just an 'or what.' "
The girl's tennis shoe kicked rock-hard sand. "Better watch out what you ask around here.
Domingo always picks a 'project girl' He hasn't had one for this flamingo thing yet."
"No doubt the elegant Verina--"
A frown, deep enough to bury BBs in, wrinkled her brown brow. "He's never shown up with some la-di-da female like that before."
"Yes, it's so unfair with these foreign females coming in all fresh and dolled up when you installers are filthy and tired and hot," Temple said demurely.
"You mean we might be jealous? Well, some of us, maybe. And especially the guys who had an eye on the girl Domingo picks."
"Does this 'project girl' always go along with her new status?"
"Oh, no. Then there's hell to pay. Domingo gets in a bummer mood. And some of the girls are actually miffed to be considered second choices. Can you believe that?"
Gazing into the defensive eyes, Temple definitely could.
The girl bit her lip and looked around. The others had dispersed back to their forest of pink legs and necks. She spoke again, more softly.
"We have this pool going, the group. On who will be Domingo's Clingo for the project. You know, his squeeze. Some of the guys are pissed that nobody's emerged as a clear favorite yet.
That's why they were asking about you."
"I'm a candidate? I am honored. But Verina has a headlock on him for now, alas."
"Don't be too sure. He really likes younger women, and you're much closer to us than she is."
"I am a younger woman? Bless you, my child!"
"Well, like ... you can't be more than . .. twenty-five, right?"
Temple took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I can. Try . . . thirty."
The girl's sunburned nose wrinkled. "Gross! Then our pool still has a ghost of a chance. I'll tell the others."
Off she hustled, as fast as her clumsy hiking shoes would take her, to report far and wide that Temple was thirty.
Temple remained seated on the warm fender, kicking the tire with her rubber-soled shoes and thinking.