a warhorse or a dragon or something so old that nobody alive knew its name anymore.
She knew that Matt had not known where they were going when he had headed into the darkness, that neither he nor she could say where they had been and that even the Vampire didn't need to know how to get back home. Click your heels, close your eyes and follow t he Strip's bright afterimage searing through your lids. The road became arrow-straight as they neared the city. Cars came crowding around again, like moths hungry for the Vampire's pale, gleaming silver skin and hypnotic howl.
Watch out, she thought. Vampires bite!
A more mundane mob of cars, vans, trucks and taxis finally slowed the Vampire to a docile speed. When they arrived at the Circle Ritz, Temple felt as if she had been trapped in an icy, crystal-clear bell jar amid a maelstrom of sound and speed, unnaturally alone in a vast natural world and yet not alone. Maybe this was how the Biblical prophets had felt when they saw God in mountain peaks and fiery bushes.
She dismounted, disoriented, to rejoin still, solid ground, and let Matt put the Vampire to bed alone. When he came out and locked the doors, she turned with a smile.
"That was scary, but it scared away all the anxiety too. Have you ever driven out into the desert like that, Matt? Just for fun?"
"I've never done anything just for fun," he said. "But I might be up for trying it."
"I'm sorry I criticized your religion's positions. They just seem so set in cold, hard stone."
"Don't be sorry. Maybe that's what religious positions are for: to be questioned, ridiculed and sometimes thrown out."
"Goodness! I think that's exactly what happened to us in Molina's office tonight."
After a pause of agreement, he laughed.
Chapter 25
Under the Volcano
I am beginning to chafe at my lack of freedom.
The Divine Yvette, of course, is used to being cooped up for her own good. I am used to being out and about for my own bad.
Also, I am concerned about the welfare of my other little doll, Miss Temple Barr. It has not missed my astute observation--despite being aswamp in the trappings of stardom and its ensuing problems, such as fratricidal envy--that Miss Temple has been not only unusually busy, but rather blue lately.
For this I blame myself.
I have been neglecting her and her trivial concerns. In my rejoicing at the recent absence of the Mystifying Max, I have not considered that another individual might actually miss the Mr.
Question Mark. Although I spot traces of Mr. Matt Devine (namely a certain scent unmarked by any bad habits on the living-room loveseat--pardon me, sofa), I also scent that Miss Temple has been out and about in new terrains with new people. It can mean only that she is on a case, nose to the trail. Yet how can I help her out if I am chained to my cameras and my crew?
I decide to disrupt the proceedings in such a way that shooting will stop for a time, and the only possible path to this goal is one that involves a mishap to the Divine Yvette. If my darling should so much as crack a razor-sharp nail, her mistress will scream and carry on and remove DY
from the set to go off and pout and not come back for days. Well, maybe a day or so.
A day or so may be all Midnight Louie needs to discover Miss Temple's case secrets, ferret out the perpetrator, nail him or her and get Miss Temple onto more wholesome projects, such as seducing Mr. Matt Devine. (I am not crazy about his presence in my home, but he is far more palatable than the Mystifying Max. That guy is a real upstart, and no respecter of territories.) Today we are filming under the volcano.
I kid you--not!
The Divine Yvette has been wrapped in some sort of floral sarong, with a delicate lavender orchid behind one ear that really brings out the lilac tone in her shaded markings. I would not need a little grass shack in Hawaii to shack up with this doll; though, of course, I would not be so crass as to take advantage of a co-star.
Anyway, this volcano, the street side attraction at the Mirage, goes off on schedule like a baby with croup. Wham, bam, up shoot the flames, down pours the water into the lagoon below, where the Divine Yvette and I recline on a nest of leis.
Those flowers get sticky when crushed, and my weight is turning them into marzipan. So my coat is sticky, not to mention stinky, and even the Divine Yvette is showing the slightest bit of temperament.
"Get me out of this flower graveyard!" she yowls to all and sundry. "I do not like blossoms, only greenery and only when I can eat it. Louie, my love, help me! The scent is overpoweringly awful."
I am a wee bit surprised, as the scent in the Divine One's powder (not her selection, of course) is a bit strong for my sensitive sniffer, employed as it has been of late on murder scenes and such. Give me a reek of fresh blood and I can follow a trail anywhere!
The crew has devised this nasty tippy canoe I believe they call an outrigger, on which the Divine One and I are to float like Caesar and Cleopatra.
I am well aware that if there is one thing that will send the Divine Yvette and her mistress into a screaming fit that could pass for an operatic aria, it is if the Divine Yvette should Get Wet.
What kind of cad, you may ask, would get his ladylove wet, especially if that ladylove has a particular allergy to moist surfaces? A cad indeed. But I am torn between two females exceptionally dear to my heart: Miss Temple Barr, who needs my immediate assistance (for she will get nowhere without me, though she will not admit it), and the perfect pearl of Persian pulchritude, the Divine Yvette.
I can swim, having been introduced to water at a very early age, in a sack.
So I can ensure that the Divine Yvette is perfectly safe (as she is perfectly everything else), and even do the feline water rescue, which involves biting the back of her neck (yum-yum) and holding her afloat as I paddle us to shore.
By the way, I would not advise dudes of ordinary weight, strength and endurance to try this trick. I am specially trained at rescue attempts. (Some may remember my death-defying aquatic acrobatics during an escapade at the Treasure Island's ship-dueling attraction.) So there I sit when they plunk us two in the tippy canoe. (Did I not mention that I am wearing a Hawaiian shirt of most nauseating color and design, the kind Mr. Mystifying Max dons as a disguise--he says, but I think he likes them.)
Ye gods! First hats, then shirts. What will they hang upon this long-suffering hide next?
Three-piece suits? Do not give them any bright ideas.
Anyway, the DY and myself on our tippy canoe look like we are asail on a florist's funeral barge.
"I do not like water, Louie," the Divine Yvette admits in her most private purr. 'The Love Moat at the Goliath was all right because I knew the water was shallow and you were there, but this is a huge lagoon--"
"Hush, my silver seductress." (You have to use this smoochy language with dames to get their attention.) "I am here also. Nothing will happen."
That is when my toes feel the infringement of a liquid element. I wriggle them, thinking that they have gone asleep. The cold wet feeling moves up my lower limbs. No doubt the close, powdered presence of the Divine Yvette has turned the blood in my veins into water. Cold water.
I look down. It is dark despite the camera lights focused on our every move. Still, I see wavelets nipping at the edge of the Divine Yvette's sarong. I look out at the water on which our tippy canoe rides. Those waves are bigger, but of the same ilk.
Apparently, someone else has figured that this is a tippy canoe and has helped my plan along, quite inadvertently.
I look to the shore, crowded with camera crew, lights, the animal trainer with the evil Maurice in her arms.
In the night light his pale whiskers shine like ectoplasm. The artificial lights all around paint a fiendish expression on his vapid puss face.