Рита Браун: Catch As Cat Can

“Susan is married.”

“Ah.” Harry was getting the picture.

Mrs. Murphy strode into the room, sat down on the coffee table, and yelled, “Everybody is horrible! Only I am perfect.”

“Murphy, what's the matter with you?” Harry swatted at her to leave the room.

The tiger cat eluded this clumsy effort by jumping onto the wing chair, taking up residence on the back behind BoomBoom's beautiful, long blond hair, held up in a simple swirled French twist. Having just left the hairdresser's, BoomBoom's tresses were lighter than usual. “BoomBoom has big bosoms. Bet she blacks her eye when she jogs. Bet it's hard to bend over and stand up again. Maybe her face just hits the floor,” she warbled, quite pleased with herself.

“Boom, push her off of there. She's being naughty.”

“I don't mind the noise. The tuna breath is what gets me.” BoomBoom laughed.

“Tuna breath?” Mrs. Murphy's eyes widened, the beautiful electric color seemingly brighter. She unleashed one dagger claw, expertly hooking it into the pretty tortoiseshell clip holding up Boom's hair. With a flick she dislodged half of it so Boom's golden hair fell out of place.

“Now that is enough!” Harry, angry, stood up, grabbed the cat—who offered no resistance—and dropped her to the floor. “One more stunt like that and you're sleeping in the barn tonight.”

Pewter, observing the display, coolly said, “She's only doing what you'd like to do, Mom. You can't stand BoomBoom.”

“Right.” Mrs. Murphy, emboldened by the support of Pewter, emitted another yowl.

“First you fight and now you're best friends. You two are infantile.” The dog rolled her eyes. She had squeezed next to Harry on the sofa.

“Big word, Tucker. Congratulations,” Mrs. Murphy said sarcastically as she turned her back on the company and lifted the tip of her tail in her right paw, bringing it to her lips for grooming.

“Hee hee.” Pewter couldn't resist laughing because it was funny to her but also because it would make the dog mad.

Tucker ignored them, placing her head in Harry's lap, looking as adorable as possible.

“You know what I'm doing, I'm venting. Humans vent all the time,” Murphy said.

“I wouldn't imitate humans.” Pewter thought about grooming but then decided she was too tired. “It's a species that has as its motto: I can't always do it the hard way but I can try. They make everything so complicated, no wonder they vent, bitch, and moan. It's their own fault.”

“There is that,” the tiger cat agreed with her.

BoomBoom had just finished an elliptical tangent that finally returned to its starting point, her need of Harry's help—“. . . so you see Susan wouldn't be quite right and Lottie Pearson is too eager, if you know what I mean. She parties in D.C., Richmond, and Charlotte, all in search for a man of means. She's beginning to get panicky about marriage, I swear. Of course she says she's canvassing for contributors to the university. Her job as a fund-raiser covers a multitude of sins, I swear.” Lottie Pearson was a social acquaintance of BoomBoom's, whom she sometimes liked and sometimes didn't. Today was a didn't.

Harry, fearing what was coming, quickly interjected, “But Lottie Pearson is single and Susan is not. That's a plus.” Harry echoed BoomBoom's earlier dismissal of turning to Susan for help. She wished BoomBoom would get to the point. Exactly what did she want?

“Lottie Pearson will complicate things. I really don't want my friends interviewed about their net worth.”

“Boom, you're losing me here. What friends? What net worth?”

After a long, refreshing draft of steaming-hot Plantation Mint tea, the tall woman placed the china cup in the matching saucer and laid them on the coffee table. “Your grandmother's china. I remember your grandmother.”

“Mom's mom.” Harry smiled, an image of a lean, silver-haired lady crossing her mind.

“She was a good teacher. Pony Club.”

Pony Club teaches young people all aspects of horsemanship. Riding is but a small portion of one's skills.

Harry leaned forward. “Remember when she made us take apart a bridle, strip it, dip it, put it back together, and she inspected everyone's work? Susan tried to cheat and used a toothbrush to clean around the bit instead of totally dismantling it?”

BoomBoom laughed. “And then she gave that lecture on shortcuts. Hey, I can still hear her voice when I'm considering the lazy way—‘the shortest way around is often the longest.'”

As they neared forty both women were slowly realizing that shared experiences were binding. Time possesses the greatest power. Men who fought on opposite sides in a war, in old age, often felt closer to their former enemies than people of their own nationality who were younger.

“You know.” BoomBoom lowered her voice, a sweet, dark soprano, a counterpoint to Harry's liquid alto. If the two had sung together they would have sounded heavenly. “I've been seeing this divine man. He's so interesting. He's urbane, speaks four languages, and he's tremendously intelligent. He's coming down this weekend and at the last minute his assistant at the embassy said he could come and—”

“Embassy?”

“Yes. He's Under-Secretary to the Ambassador for Uruguay.”

“Who?” Harry was fighting exasperation.

“My friend, Thomas Steinmetz, is Under-Secretary.” BoomBoom threw up her hands. “I'm going in circles. Will you escort my friend's friend? That's what I'm trying to ask.”

Now this was interesting. The two cats and dog turned their heads to stare at Harry, who blinked.

“Say something,” Mrs. Murphy suggested to Harry.

“Uh—”

BoomBoom tried to be more organized now that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. “Handsome. Fun. A lot of fun really. Recently divorced.”

“How recently?”

“U-m-m, a year.”

“Why are you asking me, really?”

“Because you're fun, you're very attractive, and because, well, you never know.” She held up her hand, her large diamond reflecting the light.

“Know what?”

“When lightning will strike.”

Harry scrunched down in the sofa a bit. Tucker refused to budge. “Tucker.”

“I don't want to miss a thing,” the bright-eyed corgi replied to the complaint.

“Ha,” both cats giggled.

“Harry, you need to get out more.” BoomBoom picked up the teacup once more.

“How ironic coming from you.”

When Harry and Fair separated and filed for divorce, his brief affair with BoomBoom kept tongues wagging in Crozet. It was like the small-town version of being splashed across the front page of the tabloids.

Harry always felt that Fair could have picked someone out of town or that BoomBoom could have refused him. The fact that both Fair and BoomBoom were great-looking people, in the prime of life, escaped her.

“You're still angry with me and I've done all but grovel, and I repeat for the thousandth time, he was separated from you. Separated.”

Ignoring this because she didn't believe BoomBoom's version of the timing of the affair, Harry plunged in. “Well, it hurt like hell. And just why didn't you stay with him?”

“I could never be a veterinarian's wife.”

Truer words were never spoken. Not only could BoomBoom not stand the schedule of an equine vet, those calls for colic coming right in the middle of a romantic evening, she needed more position, more power, more money.

BoomBoom's affair with Pharamond “Fair” Haristeen, DVM, owed something to putting herself back together after the shock of her young husband's sudden death. To her credit, though, she never used her loneliness as an excuse.