It took half a minute for Temple's old television instincts to kick in. "Maurice too closely matches the color of this one. Louie doesn't."
Kendall nodded, never dislodging a scissor-snipped strand of her Fifty-seventh Street haircut.
And then Savannah Ashleigh clip-clopped over on her platform heels. "Isn't she divine? Solange is Yvette's sister."
Temple wasn't going to put up with misrepresentation. "How can she be? Aren't purebreds supposed to all be the same color and have the same markings, give or take minor variations? Yvette is a shaded silver Persian. And this is... a horse of quite a different color, though the darker markings are the same."
Savannah sighed dramatically, doing much to reinforce Dr. Mendel's shoring-up and -out operations on her bust. "I don't understand it myself. Something to do with genetics. But I think Solange is a missing link. A throwback. A recess of Jean." Savannah frowned at her last expression. "I don't know what Jean has to do with it. Maybe she was an important breeder who took frequent time-outs."
The moment Savannah had begun speaking in her pneumatic voice, overemphasizing her esses until she sounded like an oversexed air hose, everyone's attention had reverted to Solange.
The woman from Allpetco rolled her eyes at Savannah's interpretation of "recessive gene," but went on talking as if she had never been interrupted.
"I'm by no means an 'important breeder' like Jean, yet I do know that the shaded silver Persian is basically a white cat with brown tabby markings: black tipping the hairs. Of course, early shaded-silver litters threw up some kittens with brown tabby coloring. Those poor 'throwbacks' were brushed off and sold as pets. Eventually, some breeders recognized that, once in a harvest moon, an anomaly shines through human concerns about controlling color and breeding true, and deserves its own spotlight. Thus you have shaded golden Persians like Solange. Some people breed them exclusively, and now we all recognize that it is truly impossible to say which is the lovelier shaded Persian, the silver or the gold. It's not uncommon for silver litters to produce golden siblings. Although"--here she frowned--"it is exceedingly odd for a shaded silver like Yvette to produce what are essentially 'red,' which can be yellow or orange, tabby kittens."
Savannah stirred. "Are you saying that the lousy Maurice can't be the father of Yvette's babies? Oh. It must be a virgin birth, then. This changes everything. This means good tabloid coverage. Yvette is redeemed!"
"I'm afraid not. Before I'd buy spontaneous regeneration, I would suspect a tarnish spot on the mother, which would mean that Yvette is actually a shaded tortoiseshell."
"Yvette? My sterling silver sweetums?" Savannah waxed highly indignant again. "A tortie? Look at her! A symphony in platinum. There is nothing red about her but her little red nose and tongue."
The woman smiled tolerantly. "To carry the red strain, she would only need two red hairs somewhere, anywhere, on her body. Perhaps between a toe--"
Savannah shrieked. The notion of Yvette secreting unauthorized foreign-colored hair was too unspeakable to address further.
Besides, advertising agency personnel had no interest splitting cat hairs and paternity issues.
"Getting back to practicalities," young Andrew Janos interjected. "This blond cat. . . er, red cat. . . er, sister Solange, she has no performing experience, though?"
"No," Savannah admitted, still pouting at the latest assault on her darling Yvette's reputation.
"And we know," said a young adwoman in a navy Anne Klein II suit, "that Yvette and Midnight Louie work together like . . . sugar and spice, sweet and sour, cream and Kahlua." She seemed ready to go on forever, oxymoronically speaking.
"It's too early for lunch," Kendall interjected with smooth good humor, "but you must he hungry already. Maybe we should see how the boy-cats react to this girl-cat. Has Maurice met Solange?"
"Only a hissing acquaintance," Savannah put in cattily.
"I see," said Kendall, well pleased by Maurice's ill manners. "Shall we let Louie take a good look at her?"
She supported the weight of his carrier while Temple loosened her bonds and shrugged out of the contraption. All eyes were on her and Louie. She felt like Houdini performing an escape.
Only ... as she let Kendall hold the carrier and loosened the neck drawstring to give Louie a little more freedom of movement... he took a lot more freedom of movement. .. by leaping to the ground, leaving the bag behind as Kendall's tightened grip helped him squeeze out like a large boneless black furry lump of Silly Putty . . . and then Louie bounded over the sleek industrial carpeting while women squealed and brave men frowned and ordered: "Stop him!"
But no one did, because he was atop the conference table and nose-to-nose with the Divine Solange before Temple could race after and corral him before he did something foolish.
Louie bent his head to touch noses with Solange, then he paced toward her rear as they sniffed tails. He returned again to touch his matte-black nose to her deep dull-red one. Solange's whiskers, black and spidery, mingled with Louie's striking white facial vibrissae.
It didn't take an advertising genius to see that this was kitty chemistry at first sight.
A plaintive mew issued from the pink canvas carrier that everyone had forgotten about on the floor. Temple, having stopped at the table edge to let nature take its course, cast the carrier a sympathetic glance
"This is great," the senior male member of The Client said, nodding sagely. "Film it."
So Andrew Janos picked up his camcorder and filmed.
Another mew emerged from the pink carrier, but this time not even Temple noticed.
If only, Temple thought about four hours later, sitting in the dark around the conference table, they had confined the day's filming to Louie and Solange.
But, no, they had to reshoot Temple and Savannah, various cats in hand, in endless mock interviews. After this orgy of amateur filming (and interviewing, in Temple's opinion), invisible minions were sent for trays of coffee-to-go in giant Styrofoam cups and two pizzas that arrived cold and congealing. Not even Louie, connoisseur of alley bonanzas, would touch the cold circles of oven-curled pepperoni sausage floating pools of hardened grease like miniature terracotta birdbaths filled with frozen ice water.
Besides, Temple was too nervous to eat by now, and one more cup of black, syrupy coffee would have her on the ceiling.
Before her queasy eyes, the film ran, paused, retracked, fast-forwarded and moved frame by frame at the request of various experts in the room: the agency creative directors, the agency senior members, the agency young turks, the agency gofers... The Client's lead member, The Client's one-minded female triumvirate who always disagreed with the lead member . . . Maurice's handler the animal-behavior expert, Savannah Ashleigh the actress, whose bubbly monologue pointing out her own strong points often continued into Temple's segments, where she found only flaws.
Temple no longer felt very civil. She had noticed when she held him on camera that Louie's claws, both fore and aft, were slightly extended at all times by the later sessions. In fact, Savannah Ashleigh had complained of this long and loudly during her last tandem "interview" with Louie, and had writhed in her chair in considerable pain apparently ... or under the misconception that the writhing human female form can sell cat food.
Now if Solange had writhed . . . but Solange was a lady to her gilded rocs. Poor Yvette seemed listless and diminished her few times on camera--what ragged-out new mother could compete with that corona of sun-bright fur shining in the Spotlights?
Maurice was brought out, but, next to Solange's sable-blond aurora borealis, his American short-hair yellow stripes looked like a cheap suit bought in Times Square.