Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Icons referred originally to the gilt-touched paintings of Russian Orthodox saints. Like many specific words, it had been adapted to apply to modern idols as well as holy figures: to rock stars and Hollywood legends. Even to a blue-collar boy from Tupelo, Mississippi. Just as the word “diva” had been plucked from the operatic world to revert to pop music stars.

Things always went from the sublime to the ridiculous, Temple reflected. Maybe even murder.

Temple nodded her thanks to Madame Olga for her time and her insight. She skittered across the tabletop, pushing papers away like leaves, and hopped down onto solid ground to push her toes back into her usual high heels.

She wasn’t sure she needed to feel taller anymore. Just grounded.

A Bottle of Red, a Bottle

of White Russian

He scared her.

She’d asked for this interview, but it scared her.

She wasn’t the police. She was a PR person with a license to snoop. She was messing in what could turn out to be an international incident, but she had a pressing need to know. For her job. For her peace of mind about what had happened on her watch.

So she was scared, not because he was a scary guy, he was just so totally different. He was a living legend. A Russian aristocrat who’d become a French citizen. The aristocrat and French parts were paramount.

Temple recognized that Ivan Volpe was a rare breed, someone a midwestern mutt like herself would ordinarily never have crossed paths with. Except in Las Vegas. She also recognized that he traded on his unique, blue-blood-drenched background to make himself into a high-flying standard of the Jet Set.

Madame Olga was an aristocrat of the stage. Temple could recognize that honor and deal with it. Danny Dove was a commercial version of Madame Olga. Their common tongue was “theater, dance, art,” and Temple spoke that, albeit humbly.

But “Count” Volpe. He flummoxed her.

She had been an essay contest finalist once, back in college, for one of those “one-year editorships” at a women’s fashion magazine. Several months of demanding editorial entries had culminated in a group of twelve finalists spending five days inside a Manhattan whirlwind learning experience. The two midwestern finalists were like token blacks: in for the appearance of equity, out for the reality.

She had met him before. The Ivan Volpe, a Russian émigré with an Italian last name. Her, a tiny girl in a little black cocktail dress (the magazine had corrected her self-description to “after-five” dress) introduced in a Manhattan penthouse to a tall, aristocratic Russian émigré, a consulting director, impoverished but possessed of major snob appeal, at a cocktail (Temple hoped that designation was chichi still) party catered totally by blacks in black tail serving platters featuring gross and relatively raw truncated parts of animal life.

“Do you speak Russian?” the anorexic magazine editor who’d introduced her to this blanc eminence had asked Temple over the beef tartare.

Heck, no! Why should she?

Probably because it was the current trendy major at the Eastern women’s colleges. Minnesotans like Temple majored in English. Duh.

“No!” Temple had dead panned in a Russian accent right out of Ninochtka (the thirties movie with Garbo; if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best). “I do not speak Rrrrussian.”

A dead pause.

When Volpe had laughed, long and hearty, the snooty editor had been required to produce an anemic snark.

Temple hadn’t won the competition, although she’d seen signs that her entries had been winners. A deadly dull girl from an Eastern “Sacred Seven” college and an über-wealthy and aristocratic family had won. And to think all this American aristocracy had started with that dinky scruffy ship called the Mayflower. Temple had never heard of any of her group of twelve again.

But here was Count Volpe, twelve years later: tall, straight, white-polled, intimidating.

“I do not speak Rrrrussian,” Temple declaimed in her best Garbo voice.

His white lashes blinked. He visibly scanned for the first recording of their meeting, and found it, though he was past ninety now. Then he laughed again.

“Ninochtka! Hah! Your hair used to be Communist red. I remember. Now you are White Russian blonde, but you are still spirited. They were all such bloody bores, weren’t they?”

Temple grinned.

“And look at you! A player on the Las Vegas scene. How can I help you? Dinner, of course. Later. I must discover how you have got here, along with that most . . . interesting hair. I, alas, must take whatever ‘gig’ my advanced age permits. Like reality TV. I have always been a showpiece. Blue blood is very rare in the modern world. I hope not to shed any more than I can spare. But this exhibition seems to require human sacrifice. I remember the last czar, can you believe it? I was an observant and prescient infant. And my memory has always been my meal ticket. Dinner. Will your hotel pay?”

Imagine!