Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

She left two bucks on the bar to join Steve’s tip and slid off the high stool, never her most graceful moment, even in wedge heels, and even less so while clutching a purse for dear life. Or death.

The slick floor unnerved her, but she edged onto it, bobbing tentatively. It vibrated with the beat like a subterranean heart. Someone behind her bumped butts. Oh, rescue me! She gyrated around and faced a dreadlocked black guy doing the … Swim? Oh, retro me! Temple swam farther into the center of the dance floor, looking up.

The scene was as psychedelic as she’d heard the sixties were. Lights above, reflections below. You hardly knew where up and down ended. That was Max’s magician territory: confusing, sense-flooding, mystifying.

The pyramid sides were a blur of neon flashes. If she’d seen anyone “vanishing” into those walls, as Rafi had, she’d have thought of ghosts and freaked. Steve, sharp left-brained observer, had been right. There had to be perches for a flying magician to rest on before bounding into thin air and back to the wall again.

The impact of man with wall that Rafi had described reverberated with the driving, relentless rock/rap music in her head.

No one could survive that. Unless it was an illusion. Unless it had been Max doing the illusion.

She eyed the apex of the pyramid. Must be five stories. The neon lights at the peak spun around, making her eyes burn and her feet shuffle for solid ground beneath them.

She’d seen PBS shows about the solar system and the galaxies resembling this. Standing here in this mating swarm of loud music and shimmying torsos was like being in a science museum’s astronomy exhibition, if you actually looked up and enjoyed the light show.

Temple tuned out the mayhem and watched the signs of the zodiac spinning around the polestar. She realized the image at the apex of the pyramid was a blazing white horseshoe! One shod foot of the exterior nightmare actually “crashed” through the pointed roof to flash all the dancers below. It must be wearing a lucky horseshoe, of course.

Maybe seeing a lucky neon horseshoe was the same as wishing on a star. Temple was acting as a polestar herself. Standing still on the dance floor, she became a fixed point. People grooved all around, not caring what her shtick was any more than they cared whom they danced with or if they did.

Temple tried to picture a masked Max leaping on a bungee cord into this melee, pulling illusions out of his sleeves under all the signs of the zodiac. Look! There was Gemini, the twins, her birth sign. And Cancer, the crab. Then came Leo, the MGM lion. Not really, but in Vegas, was there any other lion on Earth or in the heavens? And Virgo, the virgin, a being as rare as a unicorn on the Vegas Strip. And Libra, the scales of balance and justice. Scorpio, with the curved sting of its tail lashing autumn into winter.

And then … Temple didn’t recognize the next constellation, or remember what zodiac sign came next. It didn’t offer a lot of stars but was rather peaked, like the top of Libra’s scales.

The one after it boasted a whole a rash of stars. Oh, that was the centaur shooting the arrow. Sagittarius, the archer. Capricorn, the goat, came next.

But … the hoofed centaur followed the scorpion. Temple was sure of it.

So … the constellation between Scorpio and the centaur had to be … shaped like a leaning house with a pointed roof—Ophiuchus!

Why did the Neon Nightmare include the rejected thirteenth sign of the zodiac between Scorpio the scorpion and Sagittarius the archer? Both shot stinging barbs. Ophiuchus combined man and serpent, which could sting as well.

Had Max air-danced beneath this bright and poisonous zodiac and been stung on the fly, falling to Earth and destruction?

Then where was the comet’s tail?

Why had such a spectacular death dwindled to mere memory and rumor?

Where was the body?

Playing It Koi

So here I am, at my former PI office, lurking in the canna-lily plants near the Crystal Phoenix koi pond, panting my lungs out so hard I can not even whisper “Dixie,” much less whistle it.

There was no time to hitch any rides, so I made the trip only on mitt leather, and I have worn my black soles pink. Some consider that a handsome retro color combination, but, let me tell you, it stings!

Luckily, I am too pooped to be distracted by the silken … undulating … translucent … fluttery fins on those plump piscine torsos in the nearby water attraction. Lake Mead may be a few trillion gallons shy a shoreline, but nothing will ever diminish or lower the water level in the hotel chef’s beloved koi pond.

I am hoping beyond hope for a rendezvous with Miss Midnight Louise. If she is not here, then my hasty mission to the Neon Nightmare club is doubly vital, for that is the last place I have seen her. So, by the shores of Getcha-gimme, while the koi beat their fins against the water in an odd familiar rhythm, I hear an internal mantra.

In the land of the Fontanas,

Lives the justice-maker’s daughter,

Mistress of the rising phoenix,