Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Toodle your globe-trotting tuckus over here for a hug.”

He set down the soft drinks before obeying. In a moment, he was encompassed by a warm, spice-scented cloud of affection the color of a desert sunset.

Ambrosia had taught him that if you didn’t feel good about yourself, you couldn’t make other people feel good about themselves. Her listeners pictured a seductively sympathetic siren reclining on a chaise longue while extending a languid hand to press a button and surround them with healing song and, well, schmaltz.

Darned if they weren’t right.

“So how was that ‘toddling town’?” she asked about his trip home and indirectly about the job opportunity.

“Interesting,” was all Matt was going to say. Moving to the network and Chicago was history now.

“You’re early.” Ambrosia checked the glitzy Home Shopping Network watch on her wrist. A long lacquered false fingernail colored dead-on orange to match her caftan tapped him on the hand.

“I have a special request tonight,” he said.

“Anything for you … insane, illegal, whatever. Unless it’s fattening.”

“Calorie-free,” he promised. “The one thing you won’t like is I don’t want any questions or second guesses.”

“That’s tough. Second-guessing is my favorite hobby. Okay. You’re the guy on the way up. What is it?”

Commercials were still blaring. He’d developed her instinct for knowing how much time off the air they still had.

“I brought a golden oldie you can slip in that I want you to play at the end of your set as a segue into mine.” He handed her the DVD.

She glanced at the label. “John McCormack? Not on my playlist.”

“Great but long-dead Irish tenor. Just say it’s ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,’ from Mr. Midnight for ‘she knows who she is.’ Then you finish your show with a second song, requested by Anonymous. ‘I Know You’re Out There Somewhere.’”

“Matt, honey, what a great idea! Vintage schmaltz. I betcha this DVD is some ancient Irish crooner with crackle in the vinyl recording and all. Is this for your mama in Chicago, you favorite son, you? You do realize every Kathleen, Kathy, Katy, Kat in the world will think she’s Mr. Midnight Hour’s ‘she’?”

“Just play it. I’ll worry about the reaction.”

“Hmm. That Moody Blues oldie is so fine, like a moose call on a hunting trip, only to an old flame. ‘I Know You’re Out There Somewhere.’ Everybody has somebody they think of that way. You too, honey?”

“Oh, yeah.”

*   *   *

An hour and forty minutes later, Matt was winding up a call from a grandmother worried that her granddaughter had taken Lady Gaga for a role model, at least in her wardrobe.

“Kids all go through trying to look different from the crowd,” he consoled her. “I doubt meat dresses will catch on. They’re too expensive, require a freezer for a closet, and attract flies as well as paparazzi.”

Leticia had left, chortling over Matt the mama’s boy and his old-fashioned “tribute” to his visit home to Mom.

If only.

Why was he doing this, trying to draw Kathleen O’Connor out? Couple obvious reasons: He felt guilty—always a personal failing with him—that he hadn’t told his cohorts in private detection that he suspected Kitty the Cutter was stalking him again.

And, in his judgment, better she should tangle with him than with her long-sought love–hate object, Max Kinsella. He’d lately been unable to dodge the feeling that Kinsella was his resented, older, sexier, savvier brother. With his memory in meltdown, all the fabled Kinsella advantages boiled down to making him a sitting duck. And Matt did not need a dead martyr for a romantic rival.

He eyed the LED clock that counted down seconds as well as hours and minutes. Luke in the control room was signaling “end” with the hand karate chop gesture Elvis had loved to use in his stage shows.

Matt removed his padded headset and pushed the big wheeled chair back from the now-dead mic. Luke was making his final bows to the equipment boards, setting up programmed music for the rest of the night.

WCOO-AM wasn’t the biggest little radio station in the West, but it had two syndicated shows between Ambrosia and him. She’d been so supportive when his initially local hour show had gone to two hours and national. Matt smiled as he exited into the night air, the usual Las Vegas warm soup.

His silver Jaguar sat alone in the parking lot. That gift from the Chicago producers was an albatross. Maybe expensive wheels were okay if you went from costly city apartment to major office building, both with locked and guarded garages, but Matt’s pattern was from modest and quirky little apartment building to remote radio station to the grocery store and gas station.

Unless he and Temple moved to Chicago and a life of parking valets.

He approached the Jag, already beeping it open. Then he remembered to check for tire slashing. A tour around the gleaming streamline body revealed … no tampering.