Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Time to let the ‘famous cat’ out on his razor-bearing paws.” Matt lowered the leopard-skin bag to the entry hall’s ceramic tiles and unzipped the front flap.

Midnight Louie strutted right out. No peeking and peering and pussyfooting by lingering inside.

Krys jumped back. “Is that just a domestic cat? I mean, it’s not one of those Bengal crosses with a big cat?”

Louie was so pumped by her reaction, he immediately twined around the sinister leather ankle cuffs of her footwear and rubbed his big black nose on them in turn. Matt kept quiet, only a wry smile showing his amusement. Cats love to sniff and bite leather, and Krys’s rock-band look was providing enough of it to upholster a couch.

“Man,” she complained, mincing backwards, “that big ole boy acts like he’s ready to eat me alive.”

“He won’t hurt you … if you’re not a crook or a murderer. Temple has a knack for running across crime in her profession and this guy is her guard dog in disguise.”

“I believe it.” Krys smiled at him, flirting again. “Much as I like having you … to myself, we should join the others.”

Matt put a hand on her chain-draped forearm, some kind of uber-bracelet for the would-be motorcycle set, to hold Krys back a moment for a whispered update. “Why is Mom still acting so unnerved?”

“You’d be unnerved if you’d developed a romantic relationship with the brother of the man who knocked you up thirty-five years ago, a man she’d thought was dead in a foreign war all these years, thanks to his snobby, interfering lying family.”

Midnight Louie’s royal tour had made it into the living room and they could hear the two women bonding in rapture over the big rascal.

“That’s awkward,” Matt told Krys, “but it’s happened before, especially on soap operas. Believe me, my birth father is no threat to her current relationship, even if it’s with his brother.”

“Why?”

“He’s married and Catholic. He might as well be dead.”

“That’s cold,” she whispered.

“That’s a fact,” Matt said. “Jonathan Winslow might be in an unhappy marriage, as I suspect. Maybe he might contemplate divorce, but he could never remarry in the Church, and Mom would never marry outside the Church. She even married that abusive rat, Cliff Effinger, in an eternally binding Church ceremony, private as it was.”

“It still blows my mind she’d do that, marry someone so … icky.”

“He probably snowed her. She wasn’t reared to rebel or to be at all independent, like your Internet generation, who escaped the guilt and shame rap. They’ve lost all soul. Look at Internet bullying.”

“Hey, I’m in my first year of college now and doing okay. Our high school class didn’t go that far.”

“They didn’t yet have the option of being anonymous but ubiquitous.” Matt shook his head. “Mom was desperate to get the label ‘bastard’ off me. She thought no one in her circle would marry her … after me. She was so pretty … and so low on self-esteem. Effinger just waltzed into a paid-for two-flat and an easy life living off and cowing her.” He realized his hands had become fists. “You don’t want to go there, Krys. I’ve done the time and it’s not worth stirring up. I just hope she hasn’t regressed to deny herself happiness again. This … insanely inconvenient brother, he’s not dumping her?”

“Your uncle Philip, you mean.” Krys produced a wicked smile. “No way. The guy’s been frantic, calling the apartment continuously. She won’t speak or meet with him alone; she won’t listen to me. I had to talk myself indigo blue just to get her to meet alone with you and the Red Menace and that damn cat. She wanted to interact with your significant others in the crowded safety of the family free-for-all tomorrow.”

“ You accomplished tonight?” Matt was so pleased, he hugged her.

“I had ulterior motives,” Kris said way too slowly, not pushing off. “I guess you’re ‘Catholic and almost married and as good as dead’ too, Cuz.”

Matt welcomed that diagnosis with a grin. “Get on with your own thing, Krys. Don’t get hung up on the past, like Mom.”

* * *

Temple had been making cheerful chitchat, watching Louie explore the room so he didn’t do anything untoward with the rug, smiling and nodding at Matt’s mother while straining her ears to overhear the whispered dialogue in the entry hall. That twentyish mired-in-teen-adoration sex bomb of a cousin had it bad for Matt.

Temple was expert at listening to two conversations at once, including one of her own, and breathed audible relief at the “married and Catholic and as good as dead” exchange. Right on, Toot-tootsie-good-bye, Krys. You are out of luck with Matt. And if you don’t back down, I’ll download Zoe Chloe Ozone to give you a run for what you think is your honey.

“What did your family say when you left Minneapolis for Las Vegas?” Matt’s mom was asking.

“Pretty much what you did, Mira, when Matt left Chicago.” Temple had graduated fast to first names. She knew Mira had picked the last name Devine for Matt out of some subconscious bin so his young life wasn’t tarred with Effinger’s last name, or her family’s. He’d had a ready-made stage name, Devine, thanks to Mira’s girlish fantasies. Once she and Matt were married she would be Temple Barr Devine, not Effinger and not Zabinski. TBD. Cool.

“I’m the only girl,” Temple explained to keep the conversation going while she was still eavesdropping, “and the youngest child, with four older brothers. My parents worried about their little girl in big, bad Sin City, but I’ve done fine. I have my own PR business, a great place to live, and now a fabulous fiancé.”

“And this cat here earns his own way?”

“Sometimes,” Temple said cautiously.

“He was in TV commercials.”

“Oh, that. Yes.”

“So you have two media men around the place?”

Startled, Temple said, “Yes.” Then she realized what Mira was getting at. She wasn’t used to strict religious concerns shading every word and act. “Matt’s apartment is a floor above my condo in the Circle Ritz apartment building. Louie’s my resident male. So far.”

“Dear, I wouldn’t be shocked to know you were living together.”

“Great. But we’re not. Quite.”

“You’ll have to watch it around my family tomorrow, but not me.” Mira lowered her eyes. “It’s easier to advise a younger generation than to make my own stand for independence from family.”

“Hey. You’re living here with a member of the younger generation. Mondo hip, mama.” Eeek! Zoe Chloe had surfaced. Must be nerves.

Mira laughed. “You’re so clever and funny. Matt told me you were.”

“What else did he tell you?” She really, really wanted to know.

Mira looked past Temple, her smile staying too long, until it looked glazed and forced.

Temple’s confidence crashed. She’d hoped she was making a connection with Matt’s mother, but the woman was clearly putting on her emotions like a mask.

“Come in, sit down, you two,” Mira invited Matt and his cousin with as much summoned warmth as if she’d been playing the hostess in a restaurant by rote. “Or … wait. Krys, can you get some glasses and that bottle of sherry from Christmas? We should toast the engaged couple.”

Matt sat on an upholstered chair as Krys stood still, her expression a blend of distaste … and reluctance to leave the room for even a moment. The girl’s territorial fixation on Matt would have amused Temple if she hadn’t been involved.

Then Krys whirled and left, her short-short skirt hem flouncing. Bursts of hurrying steps and banging cupboards in the kitchen revealed Krys’s rebellious mood, while Mira smiled apologetically at their guests.