Кэрол Дуглас: Cat In An Aqua Storm

“No, thanks.” Temple turned to inspect her own “baby” in his vetmobile. “Louie needs to get his breakfast just as soon as I can tote in the twenty-pound bag in the trunk. I’ll pass.”

“Chicken?” Electra grinned wickedly, donning her helmet.

Temple didn’t honor that with a direct answer. “I’ve got a lot of work to get out on my computer before the WICA meeting at five-thirty. Sorry. Some other time,” she added with rare insincerity.

Electra’s platinum-gray eyebrows lofted nearly to the helmet’s brim. “Wicca? I didn’t know you were interested in witchcraft.”

“I’m not. It’s the Women in Communications Association. Great for networking, now that digging up freelance clients in the recession is more like doing black magic than white witchcraft.”

“I wouldn’t joke about the dark arts, dearie,” Electra said with a shudder, flipping down her sinister visor.

Despite needing to hustle, Temple couldn’t resist waiting to watch the landlady mount, expertly kick away the support, start the engine and chatter off in low gear to the shed around back.

Then she glumly lugged Louie through the gate, shut it and headed across the area bordering the pool, relieved that Matt Devine wasn’t in sight.

She couldn’t believe that Max had never mentioned that thing, much less using it for a down payment on the condo.... He had glossed over that issue when he’d put the place in both their names. Electra was financing it, so it was simple—if not monetarily easy—for Temple to take over the payments after Max skedaddled. And here Temple had hoped buying instead of renting had indicated that Max was as serious about permanent relationships as she was... hah!

While these thoughts festered, her autopilot had called the elevator, punched the proper floor and gotten her off before the doors sliced together on her or Louie’s carrier.

She walked down the semicircular hall to her door, unlocked it and sat Louie’s carrier on the entry-hall parquet. When she opened the grille, he sulked inside, reduced to a resentful glare of electric green eyes.

“Sorry, boy. I’ll feed you as soon as I drag the bag back from the car.”

She was back in minutes, staggering, to find the carrier empty and Louie nowhere in sight. Temple sighed, slung the huge brown-paper bag to the kitchen countertop and proceeded to exercise her nails on trying to puncture the stitched-shut top. She finally fetched the kitchen shears and took several ill-tempered stabs at the tough paper until she worried a ragged hole in one comer.

Then she hefted the heavy bag and squatted to pour its contents into Louie’s empty banana split dish. Green-brown pellets plugged the hole, then burped out in a dirty hail, scattering like run-amok marbles on the black and white tiles.

“Oh, holy horseradish! This feline health food is gonna break my back. Louie! Come and get it.”

He refused to show, so Temple stomped into her bedroom to look under the bed. Nothing animal there but dust bunnies. The louvered closet doors were shut, but she jerked one open just the same. Jerk. Speaking of which, there was Max, face-to-face.

She studied the glossy, oversized poster she knew like the markings on her mauve snakeskin J. Renees. By now, Max, the most mobile of men both mentally and physically, had become frozen into this single, hype-ridden image: black turtleneck, black unruly hair, green stare. The Mystifying Max, vanished magician, former roommate, lost lover. Was he ever.

And now his past recycled... a massive silver Vampire on wheelies. It must have meant something to him, owning a classic motorcycle. He must have ridden it at one time, then left it behind when his act toured distant cities like Minneapolis. He must have figured a Heckwith, or whatever, Vampire wasn’t Temple’s speed, or he’d have kept it, shown it to her. Said, Hop on, I’ll take you for a ride. He hadn’t needed a motorcycle for that.

Temple sat suddenly on the bed, still staring at the poster. She wasn’t a motorcycle moll. She couldn’t see herself roaring along the never-ending white centerline on two narrow tires and a bloated black belly of steel. Maybe Max couldn’t see that either. Maybe that’s why he’d left. She was too conventional, took herself too seriously. Maybe she would have liked it, plastering herself behind Max, wrapped up in gear with a dark crystal ball for a crown and the wind rushing at them, the road running away behind them and speed thrumming with exultation between their conjoined thighs....

Temple rose, then used her long, lacquered nails to peel the tape very carefully from the four comers of the poster. She folded the excess tape down on the back before rolling the heavy paper into one long white cylinder. Then she stuffed it down in the far dark back comer of the closet where the last of Max’s clothes hung waiting to be taken to the Goodwill someday.

2

A Crummy Encounter

“Ican’tbelievethe nerve of that man.” The tall blonde drowned her complaint in a swallow of white wine spritzer, the PR woman’s national drink.

“Who?” Temple, looking around sharply with news-hound instincts, saw only women gathered in cocktail-party knots.

The blonde’s name tag said she was Sunny Cadeaux. She turned away from the two other women in her schmoozing circle to spit out two loathsomely familiar words: “Crawford Buchanan.”

“Oh.” Temple quickly sipped her Virgin Mary while trying to dodge the leafy stick of celery afloat in the blood-colored beverage. “Awful Crawford. What’s he done now?”

“You must have come in the back way,” Sunny suggested.

Temple nodded. “I was late, and I wanted to talk to the hotel manager.”

“Why? Are you on the arrangements committee? If so, I must say that we love meeting at the Crystal Phoenix, but I wish you’d rearrange Crawford Buchanan permanently.”

“Sorry. I’m not on that committee or any other one.” Temple finally decided to remove the bobbing stalk and eat it. She couldn’t get near the buffet table anyway, she concluded, eyeing the horde of feasting PR types swarming it. All queens, not a drone in the bunch.

“What were you talking to Van von Rhine about?” Sunny persisted. PR people were insatiably curious for the story behind the story.

“About a pussycat.”

“Pussycat?” parroted a lady in Sally Jesse Raphael-red glasses, leaning around Sunny.

“Well, more of a tomcat,” Temple admitted. “Midnight Louie was the house cat here until he wandered to my neck of the woods. I just wanted Van to know that he was all right. She and her husband Nicky Fontana took an interest in him.” Temple frowned. “At least I think he’s all right. He wouldn’t touch his Free-to-Be-Feline all afternoon.”

“Midnight Louie. Is that the ABA killer cat?”

Temple couldn’t quite read the woman’s name tag from where she stood. She often skipped wearing her glasses at social events. That meant that she got potluck from menus and met a lot of Petsys and Cerols, not to mention Jams and Retes at coed affairs. This lady appeared to be named “Nike.”

“Midnight Louie got the publicity for finding the body,” Temple explained. “He didn’t kill a thing at the ABA but time.”

“I wish he was here and would do away with Crawford Buchanan,” Sunny suggested between her teeth in a tone that did not live up to her name.

“What has he done that’s so horrible now?” Temple wondered.

“Check out the ballroom entrance foyer. There ought to be a law.”

“Crawford’s nature is to be awful,” Temple quipped, “not lawful, but I can’t resist seeing what God’s gift to PR women is up to.”