Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“Aerial act!”

I am impressed, though I do not wish to let them know it. Nobody uses these Big Boys higher than a few piled drum pedestals. This idea is so innovative, I half suspect Mr. Max Kinsella of being behind it. But he has been AWOL of late. Not even my Miss Temple knows that he has been moonlighting as the masked Phantom Mage at the Neon Nightmare nightclub. The Shadow, however, knows. That is me.

“So,” I speculate, “the Cloaked Conjuror is going up, up, and away. He always struck me as the earthy sort.”

“He is.” Kahlúa shows his teeth. The big white vampire fangs in front are maybe two inches long. That is almost as long as my . . . never mind.

“It is that Oriental longhair dame he started associating with all of a sudden,” Lucky says. “We were doing fine as an all-guy act. CC is not built for aerial acts. He is all bone and boots and heavy-metal costuming.”

“You got that right,” I tell the boys.

If Mr. Max onstage and off as the Mystifying Max floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, the Cloaked Conjuror thumps like an elephant and lands like a sledgehammer. His shtick is outing magical illusions, not creating them. And creation takes brains, guts, and elegance. “Outing” takes greed, anger, and envy. My opinion. So sue me. I will see you in People’s Court, where I recently won a case, paws down.

“We think this is a mistake,” Lucky tells me.

No kidding. “So what will you guys be doing up there?”

“Jumping from black-painted platform to black-painted platform and vanishing.” Lucky boxes a huge black-gloved mitt over his prominent cheekbone. “In the dark. Black light. With mirrors.”

I whistle low through my quarter-inch front fangs. “Sounds like a suicide assignment.”

“For our faux master.”

They are speaking of CC, for whom they actually feel great affection. He is a big galoot but he treats them well. I understand that they think little of this new act; that they are risking their own hides for his sake.

“It is all her fault,” Kahlua murmurs bitterly.

I know that “her” well and concur. She has done my Miss Temple and me no good. And so I tell the Big Boys, who are all eyes and ears and fangs.

“Shangri-La,” Lucky hisses, showing his awesome fangs. “What can we do? Our faux master is besotted.”

“It is more than a business arrangement?”

“He is hated, threatened, masked, though feared and famous,” Kahlúa says with some fellow sympathy. “He has no friends but us, and does not understand how loyal we are. He falls prey to a capering female.”

Well, I have fallen prey to a capering female or two in my day, so I do not add anything to their summation.

“He is human,” I say finally. “The breed requires constant shepherding, more subtle than a mere dog’s. We will just have to do our jobs and theirs too. As usual.”

“Amen,” the Big Cats growl in unison.

You would think I was leading a revival meeting. But then, I am in a way.

“I will be in touch,” I say airily. “I have a delinquent human to mind too.”

“Awww,” they growl in sympathy.

Kit and Caboodle

“This is the cutest place,” Aunt Kit exclaimed as she moved from Temple’s small entry area into the living room.

“Your mini Flatiron building in Greenwich Village isn’t anything to whistle Dixie at,” Temple said.

“Yes, but the whole interior has been renovated. This is the real schlemiel, as they said on Laverne and Shirley . Oops! I’m dating myself, aren’t I?”

“Aunt Kit, you will never date, only improve with time,” Temple said. “The couch unfolds into a bed.”

“That big thing? I don’t need a bed in your living room. At my height, the sofa will be as comfy as a cradle.”

“At our height,” Temple said ruefully, watching Kit kick off her four-inch heels and bump hips with a lounging Midnight Louie as she claimed the sofa for her own.

It’ll be an interesting bedtime around the Circle Ritz tonight , Temple thought. “I’ve got the Porthault sheets ready,” she said, kidding. “You can use the sofa open or closed.”

“Mr. Big Boy and I can share just fine,” Kit growled in a super-satisfied Mae West voice. “I’m sure he’ll come up and see me sometime. In the night.”

Every naughty implication in the phrase was punched out perfectly. Kit wasn’t an ex-actress for nothing.

“You’re sure I’m not intruding?” her aunt added, pushing her large-framed glasses atop her head.

“No,” Temple said without thinking.

“No, you’re not sure I’m not intruding, or no, I’m not intruding?”

“No, you’re not intruding,” Temple said firmly. “I imposed on your hospitality in New York last Christmas.”

“You did not impose, my dear. Midnight Louie did, as I recall. But we are old friends now, eh? And happy to cohabitate. Right, Chief?”

Louie’s green eyes had become narrowed slits in his handsome head. He didn’t like humans to speak for him. Kit ran her long painted fingernails along his whisker-stubbly chin and down his chest hair.

He rolled over like a kitten.

Temple beamed on this happy domestic scene. Having her aunt here was amazingly comforting. She was bewitched, bothered, and bewildered at the moment, which she might confide to Aunt Kit later, when there weren’t feline eavesdroppers around.

They had a microwave dinner and luxuriated their bare toes in the faux goat-hair rug under the coffee table. Louie had taken himself off somewhere through the open bathroom window, fleeing the girly ambiance.

Their wineglasses were on the third refill.

“So.” Kit was settling into her confidante mode. “How’s your tall, dark, and handsome fella?”

“Fine. I guess.”

“Not fine! A wishy-washy answer if I ever heard one.”

“Max has . . . a lot of issues.”

“Family?”

“In a way.”

“Work then?”

“In a way.”

“Why can’t you say in what way?”

“Because . . . his life is a secret that could get other people killed.” “He’s mob?”

“No, he’s hero, which is much tougher.”

Kit kept silent for a bit. “What’s with keeping the blond hair?”

Temple shook herself upright. Blonde was a badge of courage, in this instance, from going undercover and nailing a killer.

“I don’t know what to do. If I dye it my natural Little Orphan Annie red, the dye job will fade as the roots grow out and I’ll have to redye it all to match. If I don’t dye it red, I’ll have crimson roots and glitzy platinum hair. Going completely white at the roots might work best, but not all of my brushes with crime and murder have scared me that much so far. No roots are showing yet, so I have a couple weeks to decide. Besides, I may discover I like being a blond bimbo.”

“Temple! This is the little scabby-kneed roller-skating niece I knew and loved in Minneapolis?”

“This is my glamorous Aunt Kit, who came to the family reunion picnic at Minnehaha Park with her boyfriend with the sexy convertible and the ear stud?”

“You still remember that?”

“The handsome boyfriend?”

“No, the sexy convertible.”

“Nobody in Minnesota drove convertibles. Too cold and too many mosquitoes when it was warm.”

“Morgan,” Kit recalled.

“The car?”

“No, the boyfriend.”

“How come you never married?”

Kit sighed. Set down her wineglass. “My era. Liberation. Independence. A career. The big city. Sex and the City . Enough success to become a carousel. Some great guys, always moving on and upward. Getting ‘too old’ for acting when I was thirty-five. Finding I could write as well as act. That was a woman’s world. Any guys I met after that were all unhappily divorced. All needed shoulders and understanding baby-sitters. My time was past. And . . . I did what my stars allowed. I was always more, or less, Me, not Somebody’s Wife or Somebody’s Mother. But—” Kit smiled at Temple. “I have always been excessively proud to be your aunt.”