Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

The exhibition curator was a tall, snowy-polled stork of a man named Count Ivan Volpe. A French citizen, his family had fled the 1917 Russian revolution for Paris, as had so many aristocratic White Russians, or supporters of the czars. Ever after, French culture had a distinct Russian accent in such artistic circles as dance and graphic design.

Temple couldn’t decide whether Volpe would be best typecast as an impossibly snobby Parisian head waiter or an autocratic Slavic prince. Either way, his accent was divine. The women at the table, though few, perked up to hear it.

A decidedly proletariat-looking man—strong nose, strong back, weak chin—who spoke neither English nor French, was introduced as Dimitri Demyenov. This Russian government representative was accompanied by two Russian tractors who stood silo-still behind him throughout lunch.

Not literal tractors, mind you, just the human equivalent of same: bull-necked, rhino-chested men in black-green suits with the no-nonsense tailoring of flak jackets.

Temple was surprised that the Terrible Two didn’t overtly taste Dimitri’s dishes before he did. Who could forget the dioxin poisoning of presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko in the Ukraine?

Olga Kirkov was the exhibition designer, obviously a former ballerina—such a tiny, fragile creature, as creased and transparent as old lace. Imperial in mein and manner, her eyebrows were so elevated they could have been McDonald’s golden arches etched in mourning black. There was something childlike about her immobile, disciplined features, like a doll with seven facelifts.

Her opposite was the thirty-something feature writer for Artiste magazine, a glossy national review of multimedia events. This tall, awkward bundle of hyper-intelligent bones with popping doe eyes had a name ideal for her job, though Paris Hilton it was not: Maven Abernathy.

The portly gentlemen were harder to distinguish: expensive but not too-designer suits, ebbing age-paled hair, glittering rimless glasses, soft pink hands that honed their only calluses on board reports, not elite gym weight machines.

Two represented sponsoring corporations, adding luster to their corporate logos for backing a bona fide crosscultural coup. And for flashing their company names in front of the millions who visited Las Vegas and the hundreds who covered its every wink and twinkle and buzz on multimedia outlets day in and day out.

Temple nodded and shook hands where offered and finally sank onto her cushy red velvet place with spinning brain and rejoicing haunches.

Randy would give her a remedial course in Mass Introductions 101 after lunch. For now, she just had to speak softly and make intense mental notes on the personalities and politics surrounding this ballyhooed event.

First, there was the ordering ritual.

A waitress in green body paint—whose costume was designed to show the most of it that was legal—declaimed the innumerable specials and took orders.

Boris and Natasha, Temple’s nicknames for the unidentified standing goons, made furtive notes on everybody’s orders. Looking for poison or planning on planting it?

Even the pre-luncheon drinks took on a political cast. Some ordered Black Russians, some ordered White Russians. Some ordered raspberry-red white-chocolate martinis, shaken, not stirred, renamed Pink Russians for this occasion. She and Randy shared a peace-keeping order: pink Zinfandel wine spritzers. The chitchat began over appetizers, a pan-galaxial platter of haute French, Russian, Asian, and Tex-Mex teasers.

Every PR person in the business knows that meals and drinks are a professional hazard, rather like sand traps in golf. You have to play through them, but it isn’t pleasant or easy and you may end up looking like an idiot. Or in this case, fat.

This was a crosscultural sand trap: Post-Communist New Russia huckstering its once-despised Old Russian aristocracy meets New Wave Las Vegas and American know-how/hype-now via the intervention of the delicate and decidedly iffy French connection.

Snobbery and savvy were having an arm-wrestling contest in the subtlest of terms. Temple couldn’t help thinking that something had to give.

The art people really couldn’t stomach the publicity hype and the tacked-on magic show. The hotel people couldn’t swallow Culture with a capital C when it didn’t include generous amounts of media slap, dash, and tickle.

The expanding New Russia’s sense of enterprise couldn’t unloose the Old Red State need for heavy-handed control. The Old Las Vegas free-roulette-wheeling love of the art of the deal couldn’t slick down its cowlicks to kowtow to High Culture on a roll.

Talk about a marriage made in Hell. This was a miscarriage made in Hellespont: Byron versus Hulk Hogan. Erté versus Eminem. Fabergé versus Rasputin.

Something, Temple told herself for the second, third, and fourth time, has got to give. If this exhibition opened without a major media glitch, Temple and Randy would be so lucky they ought to enter the lottery.