Читать онлайн «Cat in a Crimson Haze»

I want one thing on the record, straight off.

Millions have seen a television commercial with a giant, metal-gilded, Art Deco lion-dude striding across the sand-choked Las Vegas scenery. When he stretches out, he hunkers down to become a high-tech Sphinx of sorts. In a touch of computer-graphics magic, the new MGM

Grand Hotel and Theme Park fans out from his hindquarters like a green-glass peacock's tail.

Put down this: I am not impressed.

There is only one major pussycat in this town, and the name is Midnight Louie.

Even now I can glimpse the kitchen bulletin board, where my PR-conscious roommate has posted my Iatest newspaper likeness.

This one is nothing to phone home about: I look like something the dog dragged in. Ears flattened and eyes at half-mast, I am being menaced by what looks like a UFO, but is actually a clear plastic breathing apparatus. This photograph commemorates the moment when I was supposedly rescued from the clutches of the cat crucifier of my last adventure. The fireman flourishing the plastic mask is allegedly administering life-saving oxygen to my air-starved puss after I was given a chloroform muffler and tied into a burlap bag.

In this instance, a picture is not worth a thousand words; it is not even worth a three-day gig at the bottom of a finch cage.

Suffice it to say that I engineered my own escape from the burlap bag. I was even ready to direct an all-feline uprising to save Miss Temple Barr from a premature toasting, when the clumsy firemen interfered. I no more needed oxygen than a fish needs an air hose, but the redundant firemen had to do something to look good in the media. I am not a victim of anything in that snapshot except an ill-conceived photo opportunity.

At present, however, even a prime-time pussums believes in observing the signs of the times. I can read the hieroglyphics on the wall: this televised muscle-bound feline escapee from Virtual Reality City is indeed a poster boy for the Times They Are A-Changing.

Not only has the MGM Grand Hotel resurrected itself far from the ashes of its former location on the Strip (now Bally's), but it has roared back with 5005 rooms, the most in ail the world.

The name of the game in this toddling town nowadays is two words that would stop a stripper cold In mid-grind. It might even chill a bookie's soul right where he carries it, in his back pocket with the rest of the cash.

The catch phrase of the day is Family Values.

Call me cynical, but it is my observation that Family Values never come into play with so much enthusiasm as when the bottom line is at stake. And the bottom line in Vegas these days is no longer the thin, white tan-streak left by a thong bikini.