"There's a hook on the back of the door," Kendall suggested.
Temple hung up what she could, then straightened the short fuchsia wool skimp dress she wore (very sixties) and rummaged in the tote for her shoe bag. She leaned against the desk edge while pulling on black suede chunky heels. Presto, from Nanook of the North to something a bit more citified.
Kendall had managed to buckle Louie on sideways, despite risking her long, manicurist-abetted, bronze-enameled fingernails. She shrugged, but eyed Temple with approval. "Thank
goodness the male ad execs didn't see you in that marshmallow outfit. They would have ruled you out as too fat to go on TV no matter what you looked like underneath."
"Decisions are made that fast around here?"
"Decisions are made like lightning. Good thing I was a rock-climber in college and learned to think on my feet and hands. That's why we're moving on this over the holidays. You do know that you and Louie are not the only candidates."
Temple did not know, and did not like hearing about it now, but she kept a polite smile on her face and said nothing.
"Maurice is still under consideration, and we do have a film pro who's anxious to take this on, although it's a bit awkward with what happened with her cat."
"Film pro?" This is Christmas, Temple implored (and possibly, in her heart, threatened) whatever gods may be. Don't do this to me!
All this way, and it was a beauty contest.
"Don't worry. I've seen her, and you'll do fine. But, ummm .. ."
Kendall's narrowed hazel eyes stared at Temple.
"Yes?" Temple asked anxiously. Gosh, did she have a snag in her smile or something? A run in her fingernail polish? Her hose had to be all right because they were opaque black, so as not to show black cat hairs.
"It might be to your advantage to meet everybody without an addition of twenty ugly pounds. You're so petite, why hide it? Why don't I tote Louie in this getup, and prove even a dunce can don a cat carrier? You know, the manufacturer might be interested in of-fering the carriers as a premium."
Temple nodded. She was beginning to understand the corporate culture at Colby, Janos and Renaldi. Everything had an angle. Everyone was always thinking. Something positive. Something negative. She hadn't been under this kind of magnifying glass since high school gym class, when they'd been subjected to a harridan who was part marine drill sergeant and part Marquis de Sade. Everyone had a use. Everyone had no excuse.
She eyed Midnight Louie, who eyed her right back.
Act sharp, she told him mentally. This place may look disorganized, but so do shark tanks when the itty-bitty fishes school past.
Louie blinked in that solemn way cats have. He was all eyes, and all ears. He acted as if he understood every word, but cats don't read minds. Do they?
Temple appreciated Kendall's concern, but wondered why she was its beneficiary. Right now she was being shepherded toward the inner offices, being briefed on who was who in the firm's hierarchy.
Usually a quick study, Temple was befuddled by the roster of Colby, Janos and Renaldi. Apparently all were founders or scions of family Company, by all appearances, but the family was not necessarily all happy.
Kendall Opened the unmarked walnut door before them, and Temple waltzed confidently through, pretending to make a stage entrance as Joan Crawford.
She was glad she had chosen to come in six feet tall, because she walked right into a set change as drastic as from rural Kansas to downtown Oz. Temple faced a huge multimedia conference room muted with upholstered gray-flannel walls. It was filled to the giant, built-in film and TV screens with men in, yes, Brooks Brothers suits. Here and there Temple glimpsed patterned suspenders as a racy, individual touch. One man even wore a bow tie. None cultivated mustaches or other facial hair. The women in the room, few but fierce, were Stepford wives: impeccably groomed clones wearing the latest version of the corporate woman's power suit.
Except for one woman. Temple's rival. The film performer, and Louie's blond bete noire . . .
Savannah Ashleigh.
Chapter 10
Cacaphoney
A long, shocked silence that slowly became a long, hostile silence prevailed while those previously acquainted sized each other up.
Unfortunately, only two people present were previously acquainted, and it hadn't been a success.
The shivers at Temple's nape eased once she realized that Savannah Ashleigh had arrived for this key East Coast conference in full Hollywood Babe regalia.
A television spokesperson must be neat, clean, thrifty, brave and conventionally attired at all times. Savannah's champagne -colored leather jumpsuit with brass studs interlarded with festive, cashew-size red rhinestones might work for a Country Western singer, or a reincarnation of Elvis, but it did nothing for a cat-food rep. Not to mention what cat claws would do to that butter-soft Rodeo Drive hide on camera, either the leather jumpsuit's, or Savannah's.
And the shoes! For once Temple was conservatively shod in closed-toe suede pumps. Savannah Ashleigh's feet, however, were a playground of metallic leather and clear plastic straps on four-inch heels. Even at their highest, Temple thought from her new, lofty prominence of subdued taste, her own high heels never surpassed three inches.
It was also obvious that Miss Ashleigh had been a fashion victim in too many B movies of late, as well as in too many plastic surgeons' offices.
She wore a shoulder-dusting clatter of earrings, an overpopulated gold charm bracelet and several large cocktail rings of dubious ancestry. All that armament would chime against microphones and rattle on paper and batter the on-set furniture.
Temple knew her fashion style was a happy-go-lucky hybrid of her theatrical and television-news backgrounds, and the one immutable, her petite frame. In casual clothes she looked like a thirteen-year-old, hardly a serious spokeswoman for a television news program. So on camera she'd resorted to stylish suits and very little jewelry. Jane Pauley used attractive pins as a riveting signature: very visible but also very out-of-the-way when hands and head had to literally be plugged into a national network.
As for Temple's shoe-thing, it had always been there, like her freckles, from her earliest years. And female TV reporters, invariably shot from the waist up, sometimes expressed their real off-screen personality in footwear. Temple remembered a pioneer Twin Cities female reporter whose legendary pair of hot-pink pumps were never seen on screen, but were well-known and discussed witnesses to numerous juicy trials and other utterly serious news-making events.
So Temple straightened her shoulders and prepared to go head-to-head with Savannah Ashleigh. If she felt intimidated by competing against a semi-movie star, she need only glance at the actress's lips. Miss Ashleigh's plastic surgeon had taken the suggestion Temple had impishly planted in retaliation for Savannah's altering Midnight Louie's personal plumbing only weeks ago.
The Ashleigh lips were so collagen-inflated that they could pass for the Goodyear Blimp. Too, too, too much, dahling, Temple thought cattily. Hopefully, you now lithp!
hat Savannah Ashleigh thought she was not actress enough to keep off her face. Dismay and shock jousted with fury. Apparently neither woman had been advised that this was to be a gladiator event, not a job interview.
"Et tu, advertising?" Temple murmured.
Kendall had the grace to color.