Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“The bubble glass is all wrong! Someone must have added it to the household after I left.”

“Could have been me. Bubble glasses are fun magic props to have around the house.”

“I’m not catering to your indecisive mood. We’re having rainbow trout and stuffed rack of lamb, vegetable mélange, with brandied bread pudding for dessert. I’ll order the wines.”

“And a Celebrex chaser for my seventy-year-old legs.” Max remained silent for a moment. “You know what I’d really love for dinner?”

“What?”

“A Big Mac.” Max expected his companion to have a foodie fit over his low-end, high-fat craving.

“McDonald’s is everywhere,” Gandolph said briskly. “I’ll order you one up as an appetizer. You need to get some pounds back on somehow. A man bedridden for more than a month can really lose weight. Perhaps beer will help. We’re meeting our next sources in a pub.”

“You spoil me,” Max said. “I’ve been an ungrateful boy.”

“You’ve been through as much as you faced seventeen years ago in this very place.” Gandolph’s smile turned into a thoughtful purse of his lips. “It’s good you recalled ‘our’ kitchen in Las Vegas.”

“We’re here in Belfast so I can recall my teenage rebel past. Why are Vegas memories intruding in the Irish mist?”

“Because they are all linked, my lad. More than either of us might realize, or like, I fear.”

Ladies’ Neon Night Out

A doorman in a muscle T and dated gangster bling bowed her into the club.

“No cover charge, cutie,” he said. “Every night is ladies’ night at the Neon Nightmare.”

Temple sashayed in, having forgotten she would be welcomed as cash on the hoof by a nightclub’s management. She usually looked younger than her thirty years. All dolled up she probably looked just barely legal.

Men bought drinks for silly young women who dressed like they thought they were hot. Lots of drinks. Good. Temple was here to pick brains … and maybe locks.

Temple had never done the Las Vegas singles scene, although every bar in town was a singles scene. She’d moved here with Max, madly in love. His magic-show extravaganza at the Goliath ran twice nightly, so they’d played out all their love scenes at their Circle Ritz condo. It had been a very “married” existence, come to think of it.

Temple apparently didn’t look “married.” She fended off a couple of middle-aged salesmen-in-suits types who were obviously tourists, and the sale-eager bartenders, because no way was she opening her pistol-packing purse to pay for a drink at this elbow-squashing, people-packed bar.

That would be dangerous, even though she had the safety on. She was beginning to think she had overreacted to the idea that Max hadn’t just “gone missing again” but had been here and then never seen again … and was possibly really dead and she didn’t know it. The thought was intolerable.

“Let me guess,” a man’s voice said on her right. “Whatever you drink comes in a footed glass.”

Temple eyed the night’s first catch. Around thirty-five, with a face more pleasantly quirky than handsome. She rejoiced to see brown hair gelled into that central pompadour demanded of guys who would be Hollywood hip these days. Even Matt was being threatened with an “extreme make over” by a radio management going ever more online.

Temple glanced over the guy’s shoulder to the gyrating mobs on the dance floor and up into the pyramid’s distant dark peak, where stabbing light sabers of neon dueled with electric color.

“You’ve never been here before,” her bar partner guessed. “New in town?”

“Pretty much,” she lied. “You too?”

“No. I’m assigned here.”

Even better! “Are you a Neon Nightmare habitué?”

“I was right. Footed drinks and fancy French. What can I get you?”

“A wine spritzer?”

“That’s for lunch.”

“You’re right. A Spanish coffee.”

His peaked eyebrows became even more pronounced. “You don’t do the bar scene much.”

“Nope.”

“What’s in a Spanish coffee, besides the coffee?”

“Rum, Kahlúa, triple sec, cream, and sugar.”

“I admire a woman who can hold her calories.”

He ordered a beer for himself, surprising Temple. Had she actually drawn a moderate drinker she could pump for half an hour without him making a pass or sliding slowly to the mirror-black floor?

Her Spanish coffee arrived in a footed glass mug, looking like dark Irish Guinness stout with a head on it. Max-mission appropriate.

“Footed,” he pointed out. “Thanks for not proving me a liar. I’m Steve Fox, by the way, boy-wonder programmer. My company sent me out here for three months of skill upgrading.”

Temple had left all rings at home. Clutching her lethal purse in her lap with her left hand, she produced her right for a shake. “Temple Barrett. I do PR around town.” Okay, she would pull out the cliché: “You come here often?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. The company suite-hotel makes one hope for bedbugs for entertainment. This place changes the neon show nightly. They used to have this wildman masked magician on a bungee cord who could do amazing illusions bounding all over the interior. Best free show in town.”