Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Temple sat forward on the chair designed to slide her deep against its back. "Satanists?" she whispered. "I never thought of that!"

Matt shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "The cat's owners are nuns who live in a convent next to a church; the cat was nailed to the door of a devoted churchgoer who takes in stray Cats. Crucifixion is a potent symbol to modern Christians, no matter the victim, no matter the denomination."

Temple resisted the chair seat's slick pull on her weary and stunned body, resisted slumping into her seat like a scarecrow who'd seen too much and was finally too scared to crow back.

"Satanism," she repeated, truly chilled to the bone.

Dr. Doolittle was there almost as soon as they heard her coming. She sat down on an empty chair.

"He is in shock. He's lost a lot of blood."

"Yeah, the door was pretty smeared," Matt said.

Temple stared at him. "I didn't see any blood."

"It was still darkish. I noticed it as I was getting him off and daylight was breaking."

"We need to transfuse him." Dr. Doolittle was being professionally brusque. "As soon as possible."

"Then do it," Temple gave permission. "I'm sure the owner will okay it, if Peter needs it."

Dr. Doolittle sighed. "That's just it. We usually have one of our office cats available, but a customer fell in love with the last one and adopted it. We haven't taken in a replacement yet."

"I don't understand," Temple said. "Office cats?"

Dr. Doolittle took off her tortoiseshell-rimmed yuppie glasses and rubbed her face with a bony hand bearing the battle scars of her profession.

"'We're a vet's office. Everyone's always dumping unwanted or wounded animals on our doorstep. Some we place. Some we keep. It's handy to have a healthy cat around when blood donations are called for. We just happen to be out at the moment."

"What are the qualifications for a blood donor?" Temple asked.

"We prefer a big, strong, healthy donor. And of course it must be a cat."

"Louie!" said Temple, standing.

Matt was standing too, "The Circle Ritz?"

"We'll be right back," Temple told the vet on the way out the door.

Getting into the Storm fast was becoming a habit. The driver and passenger doors slammed simultaneously. Temple gunned the motor and headed for home.

The Circle Ritz was quiet. Late workers hadn't left yet; early birds were long gone. They raced up the three flights of stairs, automatically ignoring the elevators.

Temple flubbed putting her key in her own front door; her hands were shaking so much. "Let's hope he's here. Come on, Louie, You old layabout, be laying about----"

Inside, the apartment was cool and serene, like a scene from a decorating magazine on another planet. So much had happened since Temple had left here in the wee morning hours at Matt's urgent behest.

They stood stock still, absorbing the unoccupied peace of the place like refugees from a far uglier world. Temple eyed her pale sofa, only black cat hairs, like the trail of the Yeti in the Himalayas, all advertisement and no substance.

She ran into the small kitchen, looking high and low. Free-to-be-Feline untouched in the bowl, but the tempting top layer of Shrimp Oyster Aloha was gone.

To the office, Matt behind her, and no familiar dark form sprawled all over her paperwork. To the main room again and--no help for it----her bedroom, which Matt had never seen, through no fault of her own, but now. . . .

Oh, Lordy, she hadn't straightened up in here. Clothes everywhere and toppled shoes and--oh, to die; how had she forgotten about them?--four Cosmopolitan magazines fanned like a hand of playing cards by the bedside table; she read them only for the horoscopes, honest.

And there, like a fat black spider, smack dab in the middle of her crumpled zebra-striped, red-piped coverlet.

"Midnight Louie!" Temple squealed, picking him up in one surprised, limp, large armful. "I knew I could count on you!"

"Have you a towel?" Matt asked.

"No, a carrier in the storage closet."

"No time," Matt pronounced, going into her bathroom and coming out with a bath towel that featured a top-hatted Fred Astaire doing a signature glide.

He wrapped Louie and headed for the front door.

Louie wasn't going to like that, but Temple jangled her key ring and tan after them.

Once more into the Storm, The Fred Astaire towel was doing a cha-cha in Matt's grasp, but Temple was too busy driving unsafely to watch.

The vet's. Out of the car, into the office. Matt bearing Louie like a veiled sacrifice into an examining room. Temple trotting alongside, wailing apologies as she patted Louie's only visible part, the top of his head.

Dr. Doolittle there, talking seriously as an attendant whisked Louie away. "Your cat should stay here all day to recover, but he'll be just fine. We won't know anything until this afternoon. Call at four."

Temple and Matt stood outside the veterinarian's office, watching the sun glint off the second-story windows across the street. He had called Sister Seraphina from the receptionist's phone. Diagnosis: still alive. Prognosis: we won't know till four o'clock.

Temple threw herself behind the wheel again and hit the bucket seat like a sack of couch potatoes.

Matt was in the passenger seat as if materialized there, as if he were the Mystifying Max and had always been there, but invisible.

"Where to?" he asked, but he sounded as if he didn't care.

Temple started the car engine, not blaming it one bit for choking.

"The emergency room," she said, "My style this time."

Chapter 15

Soul Food

Not another car was parked between the slanted parallel lines pointing to Fernando's Taqueria, which could have more accurately been called "Fernando's Hideaway," so modestly was it squeezed between a dry cleaner's and an old fashioned barbershop that didn't open until eleven o'clock.

"Breakfast," Temple said, turning off the Storm's engine with a happy sigh to know that the car would stay idle and stay put for a while, "is on me."

Matt looked dubious in a disinterested sort of way. Granted, Fernando's was not impressive from the outside. And as they entered to face garish yellow walls, mercifully softened by dim lights, and bare Formica tables and gray plastic chairs, Temple had to admit to herself that it wasn't impressive on the inside, either.

"Isn't a taquer ia for takeout food?" Matt looked around, his doubtful glance pausing on a blackboard with the menu written entirely in Spanish.

"Normally," Temple plunked herself down at a table for four and set her tote bag on the empty chair beside her. "Fernando's isn't normal, but it's clean, out of the way, and the food is fiery enough to compete with a shooting star. Plus, the coffee is so strong that your spoon will stand up and do a Mexican hat dance in it."

Matt pulled out an opposite chair, looking around in a shell-shocked way that Temple just knew an order of He uv os Rancheros Fernando would do much to overcome.

"You do like Mexican food?" she asked in an anxious afterthought.

"Normally," Matt said, "but today isn't normal." He eyed the empty little restaurant again, so bate of frills. "This place is pristine, though, for a hole-in-the-wall."

"I figured that's what we needed at the moment--a hide-out, a modest little hole-in-the-wall for two."

Matt nodded slowly, looking as if he would rather be adjusting the silverware and the place mat or turning his water glass in his hands, only there wasn't any of that.

A Hispanic man emerged from the rear and deposited a bouquet of stainless steel silverware wrapped in a doily of plain white paper napkin in front of each of them.

"I'll order," Temple said, because she knew the menu and because she didn't think that Matt would be good at small decisions right now. "I'm having the House Heavenly Hash--onions and cilantro on the side of humus-that's eggs--swimming in the house sauce, which is very green, very thick and very spicy-hot. And coffee." She repeated the order in fairly decent Spanish to the waiter, who nodded, disdaining to write anything down.