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  "Oh!" She sat forward with a start.

  The plane was landing. The pilot had just applied the brakes, and Temple found an irresistible force plastering her against the upholstery. Just landing.

  "You must have dozed off," her seatmate finally commented. "We're here."

  As soon as the seat-belt-sign light deadened, people jumped up. Temple was among them, in the rat race of the present and future, lugging, tussling, jockeying for position, inching forward, tote bag slung' over one shoulder, book and handbag stowed inside, Louie's carrier held before her with both hands, so he wouldn't jostle against the scats bracketing the narrow aisle. Better bruises on her legs than a howling dervish on her hands.

  Louie gave one piercing yowl as they exited the plane. The flight attendant smiled indulgently, no less than he would have done at seeing the last of a bawling two-year-old.

  Temple huffed up the exit ramp into the terminal. Laptop Man had been right behind her. Now, with only a briefcase and a small bag to carry, he sprinted ahead. Temple studied the faces that flowed past her, recognizing no one. And no one recognized her.

  The entry-into-New-York-City scenario unreeled as her mind had played it.

  Except for an unforeseen circumstance. In the women's restroom she attracted a circle of admirers when she heaved Louie's Kit-Karrier to the baby-diaper-changing shelf and brought him out for water and a snack. He drank the water, sniffed disdainfully at the Free-to-be-Feline and looked put-upon for the admiring ladies.

  "What a handsome animal! Do you travel with him often?"

  "This is the first time. If it works out, who knows? Say, could one of you watch him for a sec while I, you know--"

  "Sure," said several voices.

  Temple hastened to a cubicle, uneasy about leaving Louie even with his own groupies.

  When she returned and pulled the CatAboard Seat out of her tote bag, they oohed with interest. Temple wriggled into the contraption and latched it shut over her chest and stomach.

  "The idea is," she explained, panting, to the bemused audience, "he rides up front in this carrier, I fold away the airplane carrier and now have both hands free for the rest of my luggage."

  "Marvelous," said a glossy blond career woman who at first glance had looked too cold to care.

  "Like with a baby," added a Hispanic woman with grandmotherly certitude. "Much better to carry the weight in the front."

  A rawboned woman with a Swedish accent actually lifted Louie into the bag. Temple winced as his weight pulled on the shoulder and waist straps. She felt like she was en route to the booby hatch, and was properly trussed up for the journey. But the Forbes woman put her expensive eelskin briefcase on the baby platform to tighten the drawstring around Louie's neck.

  In the mirror Temple looked like a demon-possessed mountain climber. The nylon Cat Aboard looked like a backpack in reverse whose disembodied head had made a one-hundred-eighty-degree rotation.

  The Hispanic woman chuckled.

  A college girl with a glossy brown braid down her back grinned. "He looks pretty disgruntled with just his head sticking out."

  "Disgruntled I can handle." Temple was still reeling from the unaccustomed weight up front that pulled her off balance. Must be what being pregnant felt like.

  She thanked the fan club and reentered the slipstream of jostling people in the concourse outside.

  Of course she--or Louie, rather ... or rather Louie's disembodied head--drew the kind of constant comment that becomes harder and harder to accept gracefully.

  By the time they were bumping along in the back of a cab that smelled like the cockpit of a World War II troop transport plane, or what Temple thought such a locale would smell like, she was too exhausted to make sure the driver was taking the approved route: the tunnel, not the bridge. Temple didn't know which tunnel was preferable to which bridge, but Kit had sternly instructed her to recite this secret phrase, and so she did. If it cost her an arm and a leg, heck, her extremities were going numb anyway! And this was all on the advertising-agency tab.

  The driver and the drive into Manhattan were as expected: curt, fast and jerky. Temple fought nausea from long, idling waits in carbon-dioxide-clogged air while the engine trembled before vaulting forward with a snort.

  The driver broke a long silence finally to growl something that sounded like Kit's address followed by a question mark.

  "Yes. Cornelia Street."

  More lurching down side streets, wheel-well to wheel-well with parked trucks. Temple's eyes closed at every imminent collision, which meant she spent the last leg of the journey in almost total darkness. She- could have been diverted to New Jersey and would have never known the difference. Then the cab stopped in a dark, ruirrow street.

  "This is it.'" Temple wondered aloud.

  No comment. But the driver was looking impatiently over his shoulder at the choked tide of cars, cabs and trucks.

  "Couldn't you pull up to the curb? There's an empty space."

  His head shook vehemently. "Out here."

  "I'll need a receipt," she called through the smudged Plexiglas between them.

  She could read the meter, but not the name on the driver ID card, just a vowel-laden string of foreign syllables.

  She paid and tipped him, struggled out with Louie's significant weight shifting wildly against her stomach ... he kicked her! Yup, just like being pregnant. Which she might never be able to be now, not unless aliens kidnapped her to accomplish it. She could barely tilt herself out of the low backseat. The driver had thoughtfully used the internal lever to loosen the trunk latch for Temple.

  Temple trotted around the huge yellow cab, amazed to see no blatant scrapes, reached in to heave her monster bag over the high trunk lift over. Horns performed a hoarse hallelujah chorus around her, probably at her. Temple gritted her teeth. Let them honk! She hated luggage. She hated New York. She slammed the huge lid shut so hard it startled Louie into a loud growl.

  "Shut up!" she told him through her teeth. "People will think my stomach is growling."

  As if the people milling past on the sidewalk had time to think of anything besides where they were going and how fast.

  At least the big suitcase had rollers. Temple finally wrestled it to the walk, hooked her tote bag on for the ride and began scanning the building fronts for an address.

  She was aware of a carpet of crushed refuse on the sidewalk, of men who could only be described as "loungers" leaning against the buildings and closely watching her struggles, of narrow doorways that seemed to be numberless, of cramped shop fronts that looked crowded and jumbled and sleazy. Was this even the right street?

  Temple hoofed it to a corner, people colliding with the bag she towed behind her, and searched for street signs. Standing and looking was not a safe activity in New York City, she decided, taking shelter against a wall herself near the entrance to a drugstore.

  She finally went in, waited in line, and asked about the address.

  The female clerk didn't even look up, so she missed seeing Louie on his maiden voyage as a floating head. "Block down. The other side. Left."

  A block! Why had the cabbie dumped her and Louie a block and a half away? And on the wrong side of the street? Couldn't he count?

  Read? "New York, New York," she muttered as she dragged herself and the luggage back into the mob.

  Nobody noticed.

  She could have been carrying the decapitated head of Alfredo Garcia and no one would notice, she thought grimly. She could be mugged, murdered, taken by aliens and nobody would notice. Except the men hovering by the buildings, watching the passing women and shouting nasty things they fortunately couldn't quite hear. No one shouted anything remotely nasty at Temple. Being pregnant with a cat was not altogether a bad thing, she decided.

  By that time she'd gone too far, and had to retrace her steps, cross at a green light a street that everyone else had already crossed on the previous red light. Finally, squinting in the dark at absent or illegible numbers, she found
the right one. But could this narrow, dingy entrance possibly house a respectable apartment building?

  By the time she'd entered and found the small elevator and wondered at the wire crisscrossing the glass in its small window, and had gone up to the proper floor, she was ready to walk all the way back to Las Vegas, en famille.

  She rang the doorbell. This had better be the right place!

  Chapter 4

  A Ticket to Ride

  Some may be wondering at my saintly conduct during the trials and tribulations of my transport to New York City. Is it possible that they take Midnight Louie for a prima donna of some kind?

  But no; I am the most laid-back and genial of dudes. Why should I object to being cooped for several hours within a purple nylon Kat-Karrier with sexy peek-a-boo black mesh ventilation areas, much resembling the fishnet stockings on the legs of certain damsels of an

  exhibitionist nature?

  Should I take umbrage at my public transfer to the purple nylon CatAboard Seat in a ladies' room of a major metropolitan airport?

  Does any of this detract from my macho dignity?

  Not at all.

  Purple, after all, is the color of royalty, and we all know just how royally I am descended. My great-great-great-etcetera grandma (Oh, mighty Bastet; I bow to your female feline superiority) was Pharaoh's favorite gumshoe. Or perhaps it was gum-sandal. And sometimes footstool. They also serve who only sit and accept weight.

  And at least these portable devices are modern and lightweight.

  There is nothing worse to rattle around in than the plastic shell of an old-fashioned carrier with a steel grille. The newfangled products at least use zippers (and those who have followed my adventures know that my way with a zipper is almost as smooth and sassy as my way with females--of any species). The amusing and inventive CatAboard Seat even offers the prisoner--I mean the passenger-- a view. If said passenger is not inadvertently throttled by the neck-area drawstring. Also in this front-tote device, I am kept close to the heart and best interests of my little doll, Miss Temple Barr.

  Did she think no one saw the nasty dudes ogling her from the building walls? Had one ruffian dared to approach, I would have huffed and puffed my way loose of the drawstring (or, if unable to burst free fast enough, bitten anything tender within reach).

  Besides, one other fact explains my extreme docility in being dragged from pillar to post at forty thousand feet high and six hundred miles an hour fast: I like to travel. I got around quite a bit before deciding to honor Miss Temple with my cohabitation.

  I have even been to the previous Inauguration in Washington Dee Cee, where I saved the president-elect from an embarrassing moment involving a saxophone and a hidden stash of grass as in illegal tender, aka marijuana. In fact, if there is any justice in the world, I should be invited as a special guest at the next Inauguration. So I have flown before, and not on catnip. Hence my calm demeanor during this whole expedition. I understand that one's dignity suffers dearly going from one place to another. Just look at Miss Temple Barr as she stands here huffing and perspiring in front of a pretty nondescript door on the eighth floor of a nondescript building in lower Manhattan.

  She is a mess. I, however, travel well. I do not even have a hangnail. I can hardly wait to get out and about to explore what some have named Baghdad-on-the-Hudson, the Big Apple, the Naked City. None of these nicknames makes any more sense than what my kind call it: the Mother of all Hairballs.

  Chapter 5

  Ho! Ho! Ho!

  The door opened at last.

  Temple braced herself for a stranger, for a snarling New York City apartment-building superintendent, the legendary "Super" of sitcoms. She would have been prepared for one of Santa's errant elves, for who-knows-what, but anything other than her aunt Kit. This had not been her day and there was no reason for the evening to start playing into her expectations.

  She retained her cool when Santa Claus himself stood there, white beard and long curled hair flowing, wearing nothing but red long Johns that matched his cherry-red button nose, and Rudolph's, for that matter.

  A stubby crystal tumbler of amber liquid in one hand might explain the red nose.

  "You must be Temple Darling!" he exclaimed in a deep baritone that belonged to a Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera.

  He was also as thin as a cat's whisker. Did Santa have a secret eating disorder? Bulimia might explain how he dealt with having to consume all those cookies on Christmas Eve.

  Temple Darling was uncharacteristically speechless. Clearly, she was expected. Clearly, this was not her aunt.

  "Come in, Little Merry Christmas!"

  Santa stood aside, a grand welcoming gesture perilously tilting the glass and its eighty-proof contents. "And bring your little cat too," he added with a cackle that was far from jolly. "Oops, sorry! Just did the matinee witch at the Children's Museum. Wrong part."

  Wrong place, Temple thought.

  But she was unwilling to lug a single thing, especially Midnight Louie, anywhere else for a while. Besides, they knew her name here.

  Coming in surprised her.

  The polished oak floors were glossy enough to see your underwear in, if you were wearing skirts, and neither she nor skinny old Saint Nick were.

  High, white and handsome walls intersected at unexpected angles, creating the feeling of an ultramodern maze, or a blank theater set.

  "Kit Darling," Santa called over his red shoulder to the Great Unknown beyond the current cliff of albino wall. "Mother and Child are here, seeking a room for the night. No guy, and no donkey, unless I'm to be dragooned into the part. Probably the ass." He slugged down a fat finger of booze in one gulp that made his Adam's apple prance.

  "Must whip up the reindeer and run, Temple Darling. Got to do the whole boring nine yards: boots, belt, hot red felt fat-suit, everything. Not to mention the Mae West underneath for the proper avoirdupois. But anything for the kiddies and an honest buck."

  He vanished around one white wall at the same moment her aunt, Kit Carlson, rounded the other wall like an ingenue in a Sardou farce.

  "Did our Father Christmas pull his vanishing act? I wanted to introduce you formally. How are you, Kid? "

  Kit, draped in a caftan of a far more sophisticated cut and color than an Electra Lark muumuu, swooped open her arms in the proper pose for a ballet third position. The resulting butterfly effect wrapped Temple in a cocoon of muted earth-tone silk and some spicy, expensive and thoroughly decadent perfume.

  "He'll pop off in a couple of minutes. He has a Macy's gig tonight, and I let him change here. I'll introduce you later, when he comes back."

  "I didn't know Santa Claus made return engagements. And should he have Cutty Sark on his breath for the kiddies?"

  Kit laughed. "One lowball to help face everything from pathetic Tiny Tims to greedy little monsters will hardly ruin Santa's reputation. Besides, he'll use a mouthwash chaser. Leave your luggage here by the door. You look like you've been lugging it long enough. Rudy can take it to your room after he gets back."

  "Rudy?"

  "Seasonal, isn't it? One of those outre coincidences that happen so often in a city this large. Come on. Sit down. Kick your shoes off. Unfasten your cat. Hello, Louie! Holding up, are we?" Kit laughingly surveyed the carrying device.

  "Temple, I'm sorry, but you look like a candidate for a freak show, going to a job interview with your cat-headed Siamese twin attached."

  Louie responded to Kit's greeting with a long drawn-out meow of disapproval.

  "He is not Siamese anything," Temple translated more accurately than she could know.

  "Sorry." Kit's husky voice had gone small and wee. She beckoned them around the white wall, and Temple went. An ajar door on the right tantalized with a slice of a powder room with black fixtures and malachite-design wall paper. Potpourri scent teased through the opening.

  Midnight Louie sneezed.

  The hall was really a kind of gallery. Uncurtained windows on the left offered a
broad sill trailing pink camellias and poinsettias. On the right they passed an open kitchen done in butcher block counter tops, white appliances and stainless steel everything else, and un-doubtably as efficient as a Danish Jack the Ripper.

  All along the hall, faint reflections in the night-dark windows followed them like ghostly Siamese twins.

  These unshrouded canvases of glass, blackened by the night beyond so it was impossible to see out, but acting as display windows into the apartment's well-lit warmth, unnerved Temple. They violated her cautious Midwestern sense of privacy, even safety. Anybody could look in and see every detail as easily as a child spying into the secret world of a snow dome.

  "Doesn't New York City sell blinds or curtains?"

  "Temple," Kit chided, "we're eight floors up. Plus, even all those distant office towers are closed for the night."

  "So you assume."

  Kit stopped, her caftan an autumnal flutter around her slight form. She was an older (and one would hope, wiser) edition of Temple herself, down to the slightly foggy voice, the oversize eyeglasses and her petite size.

  "Temple. Trust me. I know New York. You're not in Las Vegas now. Everything is not a peep show. The sad fact is that damn few people in Manhattan have the time, inclination or elemental curiosity to pry into other people's lives, much less their windows. We are hives of worker bees, each on our own buzzing mission, with no time to sightsee. So relax."

  Temple made a face behind her when her aunt resumed walking. Kit's assessment sounded depressingly true. Only rank newcomers-- tourists was the demeaning description--would be as curious, or as cautious as she.

  Then the white wall on their right ended with a column and a brick wall. Before them, the wide, welcoming main room narrowed to a point as sharp as a pencil's.