Лори Касс: Tailing A Tabby

Thessie laughed. “Replacing? It’s brand-new!”

Indeed it was, but it had also cost an amazing amount of money and, if a future library board ever wanted to replace the bookmobile, we had to start saving now. Where that money was going to come from, I had no idea, but it was too nice a day to worry about it.

“Well, I think he’s dumb not to see how sweet this bookmobile is.” Thessie turned around and looked at the shelves. “Three thousand books, right?”

A few more than that, since I’d shoved more books onto the shelves than I should have, but she was close.

“And we have what no other bookmobile has.” She tapped the cat carrier with the toes of her flip-flops. “We have an Eddie.”

“How lucky can we get?” I asked dryly.

“Mrr.”

Thessie peered through the slots of the plastic carrier. “He’s looking at you. I think you hurt his little kitty feelings.”

I doubted it. The three months I’d spent with Eddie had taught me many things, and the top two items were (1) A Cat’s Purr Makes Everything Okay and (2) The Cat Always Wins. Eddie was my little buddy and I loved him dearly, but he could make Machiavelli’s advice to the Medicis look like kindergarten lessons.

Take the day of the bookmobile’s maiden voyage, for instance. Unwilling to be left behind, he’d snuck out and followed me on my walk through town, then bounded aboard when my back was turned. I hadn’t known he was there until it was too late to take him home. The patrons loved him, but with Stephen’s certain disapproval looming, I hadn’t taken Eddie out for any additional trips until Brynn, a five-year-old girl in remission from leukemia, asked to pet the bookmobile cat.

I’d been strong in my resistance to her request for perhaps three seconds, which was how long it took for her lower lip to start trembling. As a result, Eddie was now as much a part of the bookmobile as I was. More, perhaps. Everyone knew Eddie’s name. I was “the Bookmobile Lady.” But as long as the patrons were happy and as long as Stephen didn’t find out about Eddie, all was well with my world.

Thessie looked at me sideways. “Aren’t you afraid that someone’s going to tell Mr. Rangel about Eddie?”

Of course I was. “Not really,” I said. “Stephen says that since the bookmobile was my idea, I should take care of everything about it. If people as much as even say the word ‘bookmobile’ to him, he sends them in my direction.”

“I don’t know,” Thessie said doubtfully. “Seems like you should just tell him. I mean, he’s going to find out one of these days, right? Wouldn’t it be better if you told him yourself instead of someone else telling him?”

Life advice from a seventeen-year-old. Advice that was correct, no less. I gave her a crooked smile. “Yep.”

She giggled. “Minnie, are you scared of your boss?”

As if. While the rest of the library staff was, in fact, intimidated by the curt and abrupt Stephen, I had an inherent advantage—I was short. Really short. As in five feet tall if I stood with perfect posture. I’d spent my entire life smaller than the majority of the world, and as a self-defense mechanism, I’d learned not to be intimidated by people.

“No, I’m not scared,” I told Thessie. “I’m waiting for the right time to tell him, that’s all.” The afternoon before the world ended would be perfect. Lawsuit-minded, allergy-sensitive Stephen would never allow a cat on the bookmobile, and I couldn’t disappoint Brynn and all the other Eddie fans. I’d backed myself into a conundrum of a corner and there was no way out.

“Uh-huh.” Thessie settled back into her seat. “Well, let me know when you figure out the right time. I’d really like to be there.”

“What, so you can get it on your smartphone and upload it to the Internet?”

She gave me a hurt look that was completely fake. “Would I do something like that?”

“In a heartbeat.” I studied the road ahead. “Hang on, kiddo. We’re about to hit the roughest stretch of road in Tonedagana County.”

My adopted county was in the hilly, lake-laden, and summer-tourist-packed countryside of northwestern lower Michigan. (In mitten-speak, the ring finger’s first knuckle.) Though I’d grown up in the Detroit area, I’d spent many youthful summers with my aunt Frances, my dad’s sister, up in Chilson, a small town that overlooked both the sparkling blue Janay Lake and the majestic Lake Michigan. The happy fact that I’d landed a wonderful job in my favorite place in the world was a piece of good fortune for which I was grateful every single day.

The condition of some of the back roads, however, wasn’t anything the area chambers of commerce were likely to talk up.

I slowed, steered around the largest of the potholes, gritted my teeth, and hoped that I wasn’t doing any permanent damage to the bookmobile. We bounced and rattled and, after approximately an eternity, made it through the worst of the holes without unshelving a single book.

Thessie leaned forward to check on the only creature in the vehicle who wasn’t wearing a seat belt. “Hey, Eddie, are you okay?”

“MrrRRRrr!”

“Sorry about the bumpy ride, pal,” I said. “We’ll go home a different way.”

Thessie gave me a look. “You talk to him like he really knows what you’re saying.”

Most hours of most days I knew it was impossible that my furry little friend could understand human speech. Every once in a while, though, he’d react to something I said in such a way that made me wonder.

“I live by myself,” I told Thessie. “Since there’s no one else around, I guess I’ve gotten into the habit of talking to him like he’s a person.”

She looked at the cat carrier, looked at me, then looked back at the carrier. “Does he ever talk back?”

“Mrr,” Eddie said.

I laughed at the startled expression on Thessie’s face and flicked the left turn signal. The bookmobile’s first stop of the afternoon was the parking lot of a long-shuttered restaurant. At first, the owner hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of becoming a bookmobile stop, but when I’d casually mentioned the increase in traffic the property would inevitably get, he’d agreed and a bright new FOR SALE sign had appeared in the restaurant’s front window the next day.

We bumped into the parking lot and I headed for the shade of a large maple tree. When we came to a complete stop, I said, “The Eddie has landed.”

Thessie unbuckled her seat belt and popped open the cat carrier. “That sounds familiar. Is it a movie quote?”

I thought about having a teaching moment regarding the Apollo moon landing, but we didn’t have time. “Not exactly. Can you please pop the vents?” Thessie, at five foot eight, could easily reach up to the ceiling to open the vents. Being undertall has its advantages, but ceiling-reach ability isn’t one of them.

“Is there anything wrong with the air-conditioning?” Thessie asked.

“Nothing.” But I’d heard enough stories about generator problems from fellow bookmobile librarians to want to avoid running ours as much as possible. “We’ll be fine here in the shade.”

There was a knock on the back door. “Hey! Are you in there?” a loud male voice called. “Hey!”

As I hurried down the aisle to open the door, making sure my shirt was completely tucked into my cropped pants, a wave of unease washed over me. The man’s fist pounded on the door and I was suddenly very aware that Thessie and I were two females alone out in the middle of nowhere.

I shook my head at myself. We’d be fine. For the last few weeks I’d been taking an intense series of self-defense classes, Thessie had a smartphone practically embedded into her skin, and we had Eddie who, if he was awake, could potentially function as a deterrent to crime via howling and hissing and the use of his claws. Plus, I’d always had the vague feeling that bookmobile librarians generated a protective shield. Heck, maybe the books themselves created the shield.