Maybe because all that Everything added up to Nothing.
Temple didn't move, but she stepped back mentally, like a cameraman, to pan the entire scene. She tended to immerse herself in her assignments, to get lost in the hype and the hullabaloo, and that made for myopia. Domingo's workers scurried like ants bearing trophies from the Flamingo Hilton chorus line. Domingo ranged ahead of the installation, like a scout, ignoring the sun, moving with a kind of Mediterranean passion; Zorba the Greek translated into a man for all nations. Verina, she of the ambiguous name and gender, followed along like an elegant black stork, picking her way among the squat, gaudy plastic birds, all pose and no purpose.
The famous always attracted hangers-on, but did they have to become addicted to them?
Was there anybody who became a household name who didn't divorce a spouse, drop old friends, who actually despised the hollow trappings of fame, the easy decadence of getting everything free, from groupies to drugs?
Maybe Einstein. Maybe. Maybe Mother Teresa. She remembered a shallow, callow girl she'd met at a Women In Communications, Associated, meeting a while back. She'd chattered on about how she knew it was a sexist world, but that she had to use it while she was young and slim. She'd boasted of the red-devil satin catsuit cut up and down to here she'd worn to some national convention, and how a gray eminence, an author whose work Temple respected, had flirted with her and pulled her cattail at a cocktail party. And Temple had thought, did either of them really need to do that? Did she need to be Somebody so much she had to become a Playboy Bunny for old men? Did he so need to feel potent, despite all he had achieved, that he could be flattered by a vacant girl in search of big names to tease with her firm, unreachable anatomy? Was it all so unreachable, after all?
Temple shook her hatless head in the noonday sun. Knowing Matt had made her into a Hamlet of modern mores, ever-ready to question the small seductions of everyday life she used to take for granted. What was just being playful, and what was being manipulative? Look at the games Darren Cooke played, pulling the little red devil's tail at every opportunity! Maybe one day some little red devil--or some little red devil's big bad boyfriend--would pull the plug on ole Darren's serial seduction act. Maybe he was flirting with death, not just decadence. Maybe that was the real thrill of the chase for him, the endless pas-de-deux with self-destruction. She still couldn't answer her basic question. When it came to socio-sexual maneuverings, what was inoffensive fun and what was a very nasty habit on the way to becoming harmful to the health and happiness of all concerned?
She knew one thing. The greater anyone's fame and fortune, the nastier, and more lethal, everyday seduction became. From hats, maybe, to homicide.
Chapter 18
Dead Time
At 4 PM. Temple returned home from the flamingo installation hot, irritated and hatless.
When she'd been ready to leave the site from sheer exhaustion, she had politely suggested to Verina that her hat should go with her.
No dice, and that was unusual in a town like Vegas.
Verina, downcast, alluded again to her skin cancer "situation." Temple didn't feel up to wresting a lifesaving possession from the top of a rival's head. Besides, she couldn't reach the top of Verina's head without making a fool of herself.
Since she didn't want to leave the empty lot wearing a fool's cap and bells, she simply left her hat and hoped for the best. Perhaps Verina would tire of the charade and return it to her tomorrow. No, not tomorrow; that was Midnight Louie's location- shooting day. Between flamingo overpopulation and cat commercials and hat thieves, Temple was feeling pretty put upon.
"Louie!" she said on unlocking her front door and finding the cat sprawled on her sofa, looking like a dog waiting to welcome her.
She bent back to the hall floor to retrieve the two newspapers awaiting her attention, the evening Sun and the morning Review-Journal Then she shut and locked her door, plucked a can of Diet Dr Pepper from the fridge on the way to the living room and plopped down beside Louie.
He reciprocated her attention by stretching his long black front legs to touch her thigh, and began kneading his nails in a fond--if somewhat hazardous to her pantyhose--gesture of cat satisfaction.
Temple put her shod feet atop the glass-topped coffee table, a rare desertion of decorum for her, and began skimming the two papers. She almost never got behind on her daily reading.
"Oh, Lordy, they're going to put up another megahotel and casino. Will this flagrant imitation of distant landmarks never end?"
Louie blinked and flattened his ears as she looked at him.
"I agree with you, boy. It's too much to keep up with. My Jersey Joe Jackson plans already sound like small potatoes, and I haven't even had time to write up a detailed proposal for the project. Nicky and Van are being very patient. If they knew I was out consorting with flamingos--!
"Hmm. Another drug bust on the north side."
She switched to the evening paper, scanning the front page, STAR FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM
caught her eye, but not as much as the word FLAMINGO in a below-the-fold headline.
Reading the bottom half, she saw that Domingo's first flamingo installation was already making waves. Vandals had removed or paint-spattered some already in place. Some Vegasites were calling them "an eyesore."
Well, Vegasites ought to know!
The police expressed concern that such a massive flocking of the plastic beasts would cause traffic accidents. And Domingo was quoted--she had to follow the jump to page six--as saying that the installation was intended to have an impact on casual spectators. That was the entire point of outdoor art. Were billboards distracting to drivers? No.
"A front-page jump story. Not bad, Domingo."
She was not the one who had gotten the coverage; her job, for once, did not include that.
Maybe Domingo was naturally newsworthy. Doing something loony in this town, even if you tried to dignify it by calling it "art," always caught the media eye.
Temple set the paper on the coffee table, so she'd remember to clip the story later, then recalled the tantalizing headline on the top half. What aging performer had died with his feet on the stage this time?
She retrieved the front page, flipped to the above-the-fold stories, and scanned the text.
When the name "Darren Cook" (they'd omitted the terminal "e"; so much for stardom) leaped at her, she jumped to her feet so suddenly that Louie, in midtoecurl, snagged her shorts. Temple didn't care.
She was reading avidly. "... found today after noon by a hotel maid." Then he died... "Police estimate death occurred after midnight Sunday." But, she had just seen him Sunday noon! "...
bullet to the head." Oh my! "Evidence of a last visitor, but the scene suggested suicide to the preliminary investigator, said a police source who declined to be identified."
Oh, yeah, the always-unreliable phantom source.
"Suicide!" she squeaked in disbelief at Louie, who looked utterly indifferent to her parroted revelations.
Why would a man as egotistical as Darren Cooke kill himself? Even if he were unnerved by letters from an unknown daughter? Even if he needed reassurance so much that he had hit on her, Temple.
Who had turned him down. Had she underestimated his sense of desperation? No! No.
Famous men did not commit suicide because little old her had rebuffed a seduction attempt.
Maybe no one had rebuffed him before. Maybe the letters had broken down his self-regard.
Maybe she was to blame.
Temple sat down again, slowly, forgetting to look for Midnight Louie. Forgetting Midnight Louie entirely, until his indignant howl as she squashed him reminded her to jump up again. She read the story once more, but the body had been discovered (by whom?) too late for many details to make today's newspaper.