Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

This vision bustles over, and I see that it is carrying a straw bag the size of Rhode Island. Miss Electra Lark is not the least inhibited at subjecting me to an interrogation I cannot begin to answer.

"Why. Louie," says she when finally and truly positioned before my cage. "What are you doing here?"

The answer should be obvious. so I say nothing. She fingers the ribbon affixed to my prison, then spots the paperwork and roots in her gigantic bag. Finally she draws out a pair of rhinestone-trimmed Ben Franklin glasses, pokes them up to her eyes and frowns at the news that I am "Percy."

She looks at me again, just to make sure, and I give her a one-word greeting to let her know she's got the right dude and the wrong name and number.

"You've got to be Louie." she mutters under her breath. "Percy is described as a tiger-stripe." She eyes me again and begins to speak as it I can understand every word, which I can, but this is not supposed to be generally known. I fear that Miss Electra Lark has developed some eccentricities from her clandestine association with the ineffable Karma.

"Temple must have entered you in the Household Pets category," she informs me quite incorrectly. "Then . . . she was called away by that early morning emergency of Matt Devine's--I would sure love to know what that was about! And so she asked me to come over here and watch Peggy's cages while Peggy went to the hospital to see her ill aunt, and then . . . Temple forgot to mention in all the excitement that she'd entered you yesterday in the Household Pets contest today!"

Satisfied by her convoluted logic, she beams at me. "And look at you. Louie! You won." She leans forward to unhook the ribbon, and then hesitates. "Unless this Percy won and you somehow ended up in his cage."

I nose my ribbon fondly to tell her it is mine, all mine, and show my claws, delicately, for further evidence.

"No need to get testy about it! All right, here goes the ribbon, pinned to my shoulder, and here goes my back--"

With which mysterious comment she swings open the cage door and lifts me up, and onto, her capacious bosom. I told you that we were buddies. A scent of gardenia nearly gags me, but I control my distaste.

After all, I am being borne out of the cat show with my Best of Class blue ribbon in plain view of all and sundry by my own personal bearer.

It is not a bad exit, it I do say so myself.

Chapter 19

Confidence Game

At four o'clock that afternoon, Temple found Matt waiting for her by the pool, sitting cross-legged in his gi on the blue mats, meditating.

Only twelve hours had passed since he had received the frantic call from Sister Seraphina. Temple marveled at his cool, collected calm. He did not look frazzled, worried or weary.

Temple, on the other hand, felt all of those things, and was sure that she looked it. At least the mirror over the bathroom sink had told her just that after she had slipped on her gi and paused to drag a brush through her thick ted curls. She resembled a Raggedy Ann doll with a blank, bloodless, white-muslin face. Shock, she thought, and aftershock.

The last thing she felt like was a lesson in self-defense, but--from what Matt had implied--the martial arts had been his sanctuary even before the church. She sensed that learning--and teaching----kept that cool of his impeccably in place, and that his hard-won tranquility was a shield.

"How is Miss Tyler?" she asked abruptly, breaking his reverie.

He looked up and nodded reassuringly. "She's home from the hospital already, with her niece. She was simply showing the effects of being terrorized at her age. What about Louie- and the other cat?"

"Dr. Doolittle says they're both resting comfortably."

"Do cats ever rest any other way?"

"No, I guess not. Louie can come home at six. Peter will have to stay a couple more days."

"How are you doing?" he asked next.

"Too tired to give in to it, I found the strangest thing on my living-room sofa. A blue ribbon. Do you suppose a good fairy is giving me a commendation for doing good deeds?"

"Maybe it's a reward for progress in your self-defense lessons."

"Hardly, I asked Electra to watch Peggy Wilhelm's cats at the show as long as needed; maybe she left me a ribbon to cheer me up. But she's not back yet. That's really odd."

"Minor League compared to what we've been involved in lately. Let's get to work." Matt rose with the supple ease that always surprised her. She had associated martial arts with kicks and grunts, not control and serenity.

Feeling far from serene herself, Temple kicked off her slip-in wedgies and stepped barefoot into the shade with Matt and back in time to their first lesson. The plastic of the mats was slick and cool on the soles of her feet. For a moment, the stress of the past few hours seemed a lifetime ago. Then Temple reminded herself that the reason they stood here doing this was that two men had assaulted her with their fists only a couple of weeks ago. She wondered if the blows she suffered then were any less stunning than the gantlet Matt had recently run through the byways of his hidden past--only, he had been forced to drag along an unwanted witness: her.

She pushed these distracting thoughts from her mind. Matt was serious about teaching; she must be serious about learning.

"Did you find the pepper spray I left in your mailbox?" he asked.

She nodded. "A couple of days ago, Where did you get it?"

Matt shrugged. "At a gun show at the Convention Center." His mouth tightened. "If I had known, I would have bought some for Sister Seraphina and Miss Tyler's niece."

"Gun show? You?"

"That's where you readily get that stuff. It's legal. The point is, use whatever defensive weapons you carry---and you know what they can be?"

She nodded. "The pepper spray, ah . . . the wheel-lock device in my car, my car keys, a rolled-up newspaper--"

"Right, Whatever you can lay your hands on is fine, but in the end, you are your own best defensive weapon. You have to be prepared to resist with nothing more than yourself."

Temple sucked warm desert air between her teeth. "That's just it. There's so little 'self' when it comes to me. I wouldn't intimidate a gerbil."

"That's not the point. Intimidation may not be the weapon you need; on the other hand, if it is, you can do it. Say you're attacking me--"

Temple quashed any smart remarks. He was an ex-priest, after all, and she found it horrifying how much that new knowledge inhibited her usually flagrant imagination.

"Come toward me," he advised, "as if you meant to do me harm."

Temple charged gamely.

Matt's stance changed to braced feet and slightly extended arms. "No!" he bellowed in a deep voice, straight from the gut of a Marine drill sergeant.

Temple was so shocked that her heart nearly stopped. It resumed with cumbersome, heavy beats.

"Jesus!" she said, clapping her hands over her throbbing organ. She felt like a hero in a romance novel. Then she realized that her expletive had its origins in the sacrilegious and should have been deleted. "I mean, oh, my goodness---"

Matt waved away her apologies. "Authoritarian rage can give even a rapist pause. The loud 'No!' brings back that scared three-year-old inside everyone who's ever confronted a parent. You try it."

"Me? Bellow like a wounded bull? I don't think so."

"Weren't you P.R. director for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis? Didn't you say that you acted in school drama productions? Aren't you an ex-TV reporter? You must have some dramatic instincts--"

Goaded, Temple answered all those questions with a wrenching, growling, basso, Greek-tragedy "No!"

Matt jumped, unprepared for the little girl with the big voice, and Temple almost scared herself. Then he smiled.

"You ever heard that a gun looks scarier in a woman's hands because they're smaller than men's, and the gun looks bigger?"