Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

“You want me to go just the one time?”

“Yes, that’s all. Oh, and this is very important—his name is Ziggy. Zig-ee.”

He gave me his address on Midnight Pass Road and rang off before I could get a phone number. When I looked at the notes I’d scrawled, they were pathetic. I’d written Ken Curtis (?) Vegs Yellow sqsh Ziggy .

Except for the address, that was it. I hadn’t even verified the caller’s name, and he had said it so fast I wasn’t sure I’d caught it right. I pride myself on handling my business in a professional manner, but any half-assed amateur could have handled that call better. I consoled myself that it would be an easy twenty bucks. Iguanas don’t have to be walked or groomed, so all I’d have to do was put out some veggies for him and I’d be out in no time.

The weather for the last few days had been what Southwest Floridians call cold and wintry, meaning night temperatures had dipped into the high fifties, and the days’ highs hovered just below seventy. For tourists and seasonal snowbirds, the cold weather was a major disappointment. For thin-blooded year-round locals like me, it was an aberrant misery.

My apartment is above a four-stall carport, with a long covered porch running its length. The porch faces the Gulf of Mexico, where time and capricious tides have carved a narrow hiccup of beachfront property that shifts and transforms itself every few months, making it an undesirable spot for developers and investors. When I opened the French doors that morning and stepped out on the porch, it was so chilly I could see my breath in the pale light of a coconut sky. Rain clouds were building purple mountains over the Gulf, but they looked several hours away. At least that’s what I told myself when I decided to take my bike instead of the Bronco. The truth is that at that pre-dawn hour, when the birds are still sleeping in the palms, oaks, pines, and sea grape, I feel invincible on my bike, gliding down empty streets and breathing in the salty air as if I were a bird myself.

Siesta Key is eight miles long, north to south, with one main thoroughfare named Midnight Pass Road. Sarasota Bay lies on our east side, and the Gulf of Mexico is on the west. Two drawbridges connect us to Sarasota, each with a bathroom-sized bridge house where a tender pushes buttons and flips switches to open the bridge when a boat needs to pass through. The entire operation only takes about ten minutes for one boat, but if several boats sail through, it takes a lot longer. One of our favorite bitch topics is how long we had to wait for a sailboat to pass, but the bridges also make for great excuses for being late to appointments. All we have to say is, “The bridge was up,” and people roll their eyes and groan in understanding.

About seven thousand permanent people call the key home, but during the season, from October to May, our population swells to around twenty-four thousand. Except for times when our streets are clogged with sunbemused snowbirds, tourists, or carousing students on spring break, we’re a fairly laid-back bunch.

I live near the south end so I always begin the day working my way north, just taking care of dogs. Dogs can’t wait for you the way other pets can. Once all the dogs have been walked and fed and groomed, I retrace my route and call on the pets who don’t have to pee outside—cats and hamsters and rabbits and guinea pigs and birds. Not snakes. I don’t take care of snakes. I’m not exactly snake-phobic, but it makes me go swimmy-headed to hold a squirming little mouse above a gaping snake’s mouth, so I refer those jobs to other pet sitters.

No matter who else is on my daily list of calls, I always start with Billy Elliot. Billy’s a former racing greyhound who lives with Tom Hale in the Sea Breeze condos. Tom’s a CPA whose spine was crushed a few years ago when a wall of lumber at a home-improvement store fell on him. Then, to make his misery complete, his wife left him and took their children and most of their possessions. Eventually, Tom got his act together, moved into the Sea Breeze, and started doing whatever it is that CPAs do at his kitchen table. He and I trade services. I go by twice a day and run with Billy Elliot, and Tom handles anything having to do with me and money.

With all that had happened to him, Tom was about as closed off from the world as I was, but when I got to his condo that morning, there was a big Christmas wreath on his door. It wasn’t just a generic wreath, either, but a customized affair with a sassy red velvet bow and a toy greyhound perched above a nest of gilded pinecones. I stood a moment gaping at the thing before I unlocked the door and let myself into the dark foyer where Billy Elliot was nervously prancing on the tile floor. We kissed hello, I clipped the leash on his collar, and we slipped out of the apartment as quietly as thieves. On the ride down in the elevator, I considered asking him what had possessed Tom to have such a fancy wreath made for his door, but I thought it might hurt Billy Elliot’s feelings, seeing as his facsimile was the focal point of the wreath.

We ran tippy-toe across the downstairs lobby and went outside to the parking lot for our run. Billy Elliot knew the routine—run fairly slowly and pee on selected bushes until we come to the oval track encircled by parked cars, and then stretch out and run like hell, full out, galloping like crazy, just like when he was a young dog chasing a mechanical rabbit while crowds cheered and bet money on him. Except this time he had a wheezing blond human slowing him down because her thigh muscles weren’t nearly as strong as his. When he had finally run out all his nervous energy and I was about to fall over from breathing so hard, we ran at a slower pace back to the Sea Breeze’s front door.

A woman with a corgi on a short leash was just coming out, and we stood aside while they passed. The woman nodded, but the corgi was embarrassed on account of wearing a pair of miniature deer antlers and an ermine-trimmed red velvet jacket, so he kept his head averted. Billy Elliot and I exchanged a can-you-believe-that? look, but we didn’t let on how dorky we thought it was.

Upstairs, I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen, and the lights were on in Tom’s living room. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a lavishly decorated Christmas tree in the corner. Now that I knew it was there, I could smell it, too, a pleasant balsam odor. My gosh, not only a wreath but a real Christmas tree! Tom and I don’t always talk when I pop in and out of his apartment, but you’d think something like plans to buy a Christmas tree would have come up at least once. I wondered how he’d managed to get the top ornaments on. To tell the truth, I felt a little put out that he hadn’t asked me to help him. I mean, I didn’t want a tree of my own, but if he wanted to have one I would have been happy to help him with it.

I yelled toward the kitchen, “Morning, Tom! Nice tree!”

He wheeled into the living room with a curious grin on his face and his mop of curly black hair looking slept on. Instead of his usual sloppy sweats, he wore a snazzy red velour bathrobe. He looked a little bit like the corgi.

I said, “Wow, you’ve really got the Christmas spirit, don’t you?” I could hear the little defensive whine in my voice, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

He grinned even wider and made some inarticulate sounds that sounded like he was trying to deny it and claim it at the same time. Clinking sounds came from the kitchen, the sounds of mugs being removed from a cupboard, and a silky woman’s voice called, “Darlin’, did you ask me something?”

Oh. Now I understood. Tom hadn’t been hit by the Christmas spirit, he’d been hit by romance. And he hadn’t told me. He hadn’t said, “Hey, Dixie, I’ve got a woman in my life now, so when you come to run with Billy Elliot, you may meet her.”