Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

As one of the men opened the door on the plane’s side and lowered the folding stairs, another man wearing a pilot’s cap came sauntering out of one of the hangars. The man talking to August shook his hand and then signaled for the couple to bring their bags over. August walked around to the passenger side of his car and opened the door. A woman stepped out, holding a small package in one arm and an overnight bag in the other.

It was Corina—and the small package she was holding was Dixie Joyce, wrapped in the fleecy pink blanket I’d bought her at Walmart.

I held my breath as August reached into the front seat of the car and brought out Corina’s handbag. There was a gentleness in the way he handed it to her, and the thought flashed across my mind that they were a couple. She draped the handbag over her shoulder, and they walked together to the plane. August handed her overnight bag up to one of the men inside and then watched as Corina made her way up the steps with Dixie Joyce in her arms. When she got to the top, she looked back nervously at August. He waved at her, and then she disappeared inside.

The two ground crewmen folded the steps up and latched the door, and then one of them whistled and gave a thumbs-up to the pilot. He and August waved to each other as the plane started rolling forward.

Just as the plane lifted off the ground, I felt two things. First was an extraordinarily confusing mix of thoughts and emotions—I knew it would be a while before I’d sorted through this one. Second was a firm tapping on my left shoulder. It was so unexpected that a high-pitched scream spontaneously flew out of my throat as I spun around, my hands raised in front of me like two karate sticks. Standing before me was an elderly man in a dark blue security uniform with trembling hands and a look of terror in his face equal only to mine.

“Young lady, this is private property you’re on.”

“I know, I’m so sorry—I’m leaving now.”

“Well, now hold on, missy. I have to report you for trespassing, so I’m gonna need to see your driver’s license first.”

I had to think fast. If he worked for the people that operated the private charter planes, the last thing I needed was a trespassing report with my name on it. They seemed pretty chummy with August, and I didn’t want him to find out that I had been snooping around watching him.

Of course, I could have made a run for it. The poor old security guy was so befuddled it was almost comical. He had pulled out a yellowed report pad that had obviously never been used and was shaking a ballpoint pen in the air, trying to get the ink to flow. I noticed a silver loop-chain ID bracelet on his wrist. My grandfather had worn the exact same bracelet.

Summoning up my inner busty blonde, I pointed to August’s car and said, “Oh, please don’t report me. Do you see that man? He’s my boyfriend. He just put his mistress on a private plane. I thought he was cheating on me, and now I know it for sure.”

“Little lady, that’s none of my business. I still gotta fill out a report.”

I started rummaging through my pockets, pretending to look for my wallet. “Great. My boyfriend finds out I got heart trouble and right away he runs out and gets another girl, and now I’m gonna get busted for it.”

He looked up. “You got heart trouble?”

I shifted my weight and glared at him. “Yeah, and I gotta take Plavix every day and I got a twenty-four-hour headache from it, too, but what do you care?”

He held out his wrinkled hand and showed me his ID bracelet. It had a white symbol printed on it, like a six-sided snowflake.

I said, “So what is that supposed to be?”

“It’s my medical ID bracelet. It says I take a blood thinner every day to prevent another heart attack.”

I said, “Huh. Am I supposed to wear one of those?”

He’d suddenly taken on a fatherly tone. “Well, you should. If you ever got knocked out and taken to the hospital, they’d need to know. And if you’re having headaches every day, you gotta report that to your doctor. That’s not a good sign at all, young lady.”

I pushed my hands down in my pockets, slightly squeezing my breasts together with my arms. “Seriously?”

My friend Judy at the diner always says, “If you’ve got tit, flaunt tit.” I’m not particularly proud of myself in these moments, but it works. He led me back down the side of the warehouse, kicking the occasional piece of trash out of the way, and helped me into the Bronco.

I said, “Thank you so much for letting me go this time. I really appreciate it.”

He shook his head angrily, and I felt a little guilty for riling him up.

“What kind of asshole runs out on his girlfriend just cuz he finds out she’s got heart problems? I hope you’re gonna dump his ass right away.”

I nodded as I put the Bronco in gear. “Oh, yes, sir. That man has no idea what I got in store for him.”

24

I drove home in a daze. Paco’s truck was under the carport, and so was his Harley, but Michael’s car was gone, which meant they’d probably gone out fishing for dinner. I stripped off my clothes and took a good long shower, letting the hot water soothe my aching brain and body. I padded naked into the combination closet-office and sat down at my desk, looking at all the unopened bills I’d let pile up. The last thing on earth I felt like doing now was going through bills, so I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and an old faded T-shirt and tied my hair back in a ponytail.

I stripped the sheets off my bed and threw them in the washer with some dish towels and a couple of pairs of work shorts. Normally I would have checked the pockets to make sure I’d emptied everything out first, but I didn’t this time—either I was too tired or too lazy or both. You’d think by now I’d know better, considering I once washed my cell phone on the delicate cycle. Turns out it’s not so delicate.

While the washer hummed along doing its mindless job, I did the same in the kitchen with a brush and a bottle of bleach spray. I started with the countertops, which are made of some unlikely amalgamation of white marble and plastic that was popular when my apartment was put in, and then I moved on to the metal-faced cabinets on the wall. I scrubbed the stovetop to within an inch of its life, and by the time I had finished with the kitchen sink, it glittered like a cat’s eye in the mirror.

I took a deep breath and let the lingering chlorine vapors fill my lungs and hoped they were disinfecting me on the inside. I collapsed on the bare mattress in my bedroom and stared up at the ceiling. The sun was sinking low in the sky, and the only light was a melon orange glow coming through the long narrow window near the ceiling.

I knew now that it wasn’t drugs that August was dealing. It was birds. Sarasota may have a lot of birds, but we’ve got nothing on Guatemala. There are at least seven hundred species there, and more than twenty of those are rare and endangered, meaning they’re more likely to fetch a pretty penny on the black market. Guatemala was the ideal place for August to get all the fine-feathered merchandise he needed to keep his “shop” fully stocked.

Also, I finally knew for certain why Corina had so much cash in her purse. August had hired her to smuggle the birds into the country for him. He had probably paid for her transportation, tacked on a few thousand dollars per bird for her trouble, and then passed the merchandise on to rare-bird collectors, pet shops, and dealers. With just one or two resplendent quetzals a month, he could make enough money to buy a new Fiero Miyata and have plenty of cash left over to party.

I knew all about the average bird enthusiast, like Joyce, who gets great pleasure and joy from her “collection” of rare-bird sightings, but it was hard to imagine the type of collector who wants more, who isn’t satisfied with mere sightings but will pay thousands and thousands of dollars to hold that rare bird, alive, in his hands—even if it means taking that bird away from its home and stuffing it in a metal cage for the rest of its life. Not to mention risking the total extinction of the species as a whole.