Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“Sidra,” Max said, “this is the woman I told you about.”

“Her skin is pale, she is green-eyed, obviously a Westerner.”

“She’s a master of disguise, a skilled undercover agent, strong and clever,” he said.

In acknowledgment, Sidra’s lids closed over her beautiful black-brown eyes, framed by midnight-black kohl. “Woman from Ireland rebellion,” she said, her English words thick and halting. “We need teachers for English, for girls. Brave teachers.”

Kathleen’s dark brows frowned. “I am not a teacher.”

Max answered, “If you can’t feel anything but hatred, what about feeling useful?”

She cocked her head. “Is that why you brought me here? To teach children whose language I’d have to learn? Who’s the teacher? Why do they need an experienced agent in the schoolroom?”

Sidra followed their interchange. “I was student who would be a teacher in my time.” She dropped the lower part of her Hijab. “I was lucky. The acid missed my eyes.”

Kathleen stared expressionlessly at the ruin of the woman’s cheeks, nose, lips, and neck, melted to the bone. No wonder her speech was altered.

She turned on Max, the shocked, savage, betrayed look she’d been deprived of doing for seventeen years. “You’ve brought me here against my will, deceived me.”

In answer, he clipped out the familiar ISIS/ISUL “religious” credo: women as chattel, cattle, slaves. Sex slaves, from prepubescent girls to unbelievers’ mothers, wives and daughters. Mothers of young girls spared long enough that their daughters would mature to become eight-year-old concubines and their sons turned into slaughtering machines.

“Your old cause is settled, Kathleen,” he told her, “but you’re needed in a new one.”

Kathleen stroked her smooth pale cheek with the almost invisible pale scars. “I’ll go with you,” she told the woman, “but I am not merely a teacher of girls. I will be a teacher of men.”

“They already have their schools.”

“Mine would be different.”

Sidra reinstalled her veil, looking at Max.

Kathleen interrupted any answer he would give. “I have an ear for languages. I can change my eye and skin color. I am a chameleon.”

The beautiful eyes held a question.

Kathleen realized the comparison was unfamiliar. “Like a lizard whose scales turn color to blend into its background. These men like to bomb, torture, destroy, enslave, and behead. I wonder if there is something they would very much not like to have beheaded?”

The woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

Kathleen continued. “What’s good for the…she-goat, is even worse for the goat. An American saying. It would certainly put a crimp in recruitment.”

The woman nodded. “You mean, we could…?”

“We always could, we just didn’t. Us.” She pounded her breast bone with a fist. “No more enslaved sisters and mothers and daughters.”

Kathleen eyed Max and said under her breath. “I won’t bother telling her that I hate men.”

Sidra nodded. “Once we are in Afghanistan, we will pass unnoticed unless they wish to beat us for being seen on the streets. I envy Western women. They are so…inventive.”

“I’ll leave you then,” Max said. “Remember, Sidra. She is small but fierce.”

Kathleen put a clutching hand on his arm. “You’ve always had a nerve on you, Max Kinsella.” She lowered her face veil. “And so have I.”

He watched the black-shrouded women leave the tented room to blend into the Parisian night. Black-shrouded ghosts, indistinguishable.

“Her eyes they shone like the diamonds,

You’d think she was queen of the land,

Only alternate closing lyrics resonated in his mind.

And her hair flowed back from her shoulders,

unbound underneath a black linen band.

40

Midnight Louie Rings Out the Old…

Alone at last.

As soon as my Miss Temple and her Mr. Matt have made their evening visit to console me on my temporary solo stint at the Circle Ritz and moved on to view the reconstruction above (I am secretly looking forward to stairs and a double balcony), I rush to the zebra-stripe carrier that has been left behind as my presumed sleeping quarters.

I duck my head into the open end, under the hated zippered top, and put my right foot in, my left foot in, and shake it all about in this hokey cat pokey.

As I had hoped, an errand-boy Fontana brother had brought the carrier “home” and done the same usual, tidy job as they would do on a Gangsters limo returning from a jaunt if a customer had left a nail file or a diamond ring behind.

My probing shivs snag something old that makes me blue, leftover from the wedding. I drag it into the concentrated illumination of a nightlight.

I have found a black velvet band.

I pull on the elastic break-away section until I view the white formal bow-tie that has survived two weddings.

Now that my role as Ring Bearer has been exposed to the entire viewing public by a weasel of a man who has been a thorn in my Miss Temple’s side and other assorted places, I need to wash my mitts of the whole miserable, humiliating situation with a ritual of my own.

If I must wear costume bits in the future commercials, at least I will be well paid for it. These two Ring Bearer gigs for Mr. Matt’s mother and now my new united roommates must be the last of their kind. The end.

I pick up the collar with a snarl of repulsion on my lips, crush it under my foot, and use my head to stretch it open enough to don.

Then I begin my long journey under cover of night to dispose of this unwanted souvenir for good.

Of course I am caught at the very outset by a hanger-on from Ma Barker’s cat pack as I trot through the parking lot and into the shelter of the oleander hedge.

“Where are you going, Mr. Midnight?” pipes a small, wee voice.

“None of your business.” I look down at what would be a dust bunny if it was inside. “What are you doing here alone? You are too young to be out without your mommy.”

He takes offence, hisses more like a teapot than a snake, and produces a darling spiky little halo of yellow-orange baby fur. Bast spare me!

“I am four-and-a-half-months and twelve days old.”

“Too young,” I growl. “You need to eat your Free-to-be-Feline and grow up to be big and strong like me.”

“That stuff is rank. I see you drag Free-to-Be-Feline out to the clowder, but I never see you eat it.”

“Because I gobbled so much of it when I was your age.” (And did not know better.)

I try to pass him, but he has those kitten reflexes, and bobs and dodges when I do.

“Look, Kit. I am on important business. Dangerous business. Life-threatening business.”

“Goodie. I want to be your—”

I give him the mild brush-off with a side-bump. “Be my what?”

“Apprentice.”

Now there is a dirty word if I ever heard one.

I nose him back into the light of the parking lot with a few gruff growls. “Look at you. Scrawny as a starving rat. What do they call that coat color?” I survey a mash-up of white paws and yellow and orange stripes and tufts sticking out any which way.

“Ma Barker calls me her little pumpkin.”