Lillian Braun - The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern

"So this is your racket!" said Qwilleran. "Who buys this stuff?" "Planned Ugliness appeals to those who are bored with Beauty, tired of Taste, and fed up with Function," said Orax brightly. "People can't stand too much beauty. It's against the human grain. This new movement is a revolt of the sophisticated intellectual. The conventional middle-class customer rejects it." "Do you design interiors around this theme?" "Definitely! I have just done a morning room for a client, mixing Depression Overstuffed with Mail Order Modern.

Very effective. I paneled one wall in corrugated metal siding from an old tool-shed, in the original rust. The color scheme is Cinnamon and Parsnip with accents of Dill Weed." Qwilleran examined a display of rattraps made into ashtrays.

"Those are little boutique items for the impulse buyer," said Orax, and he added with an arch smile, "I hope you understand that I'm not emotionally involved with this trend. True, it requires a degree of connoisseurship, but I'm in it primarily to make a buck, if I may quote Shakespeare." Qwilleran browsed for a while and then said: "That was a good party at David's place Monday night. I hear he's giving another one on Saturday — for Mrs. Noyton." "I shall not be there," said Orax with regret. "Mother is giving a dinner party, and if I am not on hand to mix good stiff drinks for the guests, Mother's friends will discover how atrocious her cooking really is! Mother was not born to the apron…. But you will enjoy meeting Natalie Noyton. She has all the gagging appeal of a marshmallow sundae." Qwilleran toyed with a pink plastic flamingo that lit up. "Were the Noytons and the Taits particularly friendly?" he asked.

Orax was amused. "I doubt whether they would move in the same social circles." "Oh," said Qwilleran with an innocent expression. "I thought I had heard that Harry Noyton knew Mrs. Tait." "Really?" The Orax eyebrows went up higher. "An unlikely pair! If it were Georgie Tait and Natalie, that might make sense. Mother says Georgie used to be quite a womanizer." He saw Qwilleran inspecting some chromium bowls.

"Those are 1959 hubcaps, now very much in demand for salads and flower arrangements." "How long had Mrs. Tait been confined to a wheelchair?" "Mother says it happened after the scandal, and that must have been sixteen or eighteen years ago. I was away at Princeton at the time, but I understand it was quite a brouhaha, and Siggy immediately developed her indisposition." Qwilleran patted his alerted moustache and cleared his throat before saying, "Scandal? What scandal?" The decorator's eyes danced. "Oh, didn't you know? It was a juicy affair! You should look it up in your morgue. I'm sure the Fluxion has an extensive file on the subject." He picked up a feather duster and whisked it over a tray of tiny objects. "These are Cracker Jack prizes, circa 1930," he said. "Genuine tin, and very collectible. My knowledgeable customers are buying them as investments." Qwilleran rushed back to the Daily Fluxion and asked the clerk in the library for the file on the Tait family.

Without a word she disappeared among the gray rows of head-high filing cabinets, moving with the speed of a sleepwalker. She returned empty-handed. "It's not here." "Did someone check it out?" "I don't know." "Would you mind consulting whatever records you keep and telling me who signed for it?" Qwilleran said with impatience.

The clerk ambled away and returned with a yawn. "Nobody signed for it." "Then where is it?" he yelled. "You must have a file on an important family like the Taits!" Another clerk stood on tiptoe and called across a row of files, "Are you talking about G. Verning Tait? It's a big file.

A man from the Police Department was in here looking at it. He wanted to take it to Headquarters, but we told him he couldn't take it out of the building." "He must have sneaked it out," said Qwilleran. "Some of those cops are connivers…. Where's your boss?" The first clerk said, "It's his day off." "Well, you tell him to get hold of the Police Department and get that file back here. Can you remember that?" "Remember what?" "Never mind. I'll write him a memo."

On Saturday afternoon Qwilleran took Alacoque Wright to the ball park, and listened to her views on baseball.

"Of course," she said, "the game's basic appeal is erotic. All that symbolism, you know, and those sensual movements!" She was wearing something she had made from a bedspread. "Mrs. Middy custom-ordered it for a king-size bed," she explained, "and it was delivered in queen-size, so I converted it into a costume suit." Her converted bedspread was green corduroy with an irregular plush pile like rows of marching caterpillars.

"Very tasteful," Qwilleran remarked.

Cokey tossed her cascade of hair. "It wasn't intended to be tasteful. It was intended to be sexy." After dinner at a chophouse (Cokey had a crab leg and some stewed plums; Qwilleran had the works), the newsman said: "We're invited to a party tonight, and I'm going to do something rash. I'm taking you to meet a young man who is apparently irresistible to women of all ages, sizes, and shapes." "Don't worry," said Cokey, giving his hand a blithe squeeze. "I prefer older men." "I'm not that much older." "But you're so mature. That's important to a person like me." They rode to the Villa Verandah in a taxi, holding hands. At the building entrance they were greeted with enthusiasm by the doorman, whom Qwilleran had foresightedly tipped that afternoon. It was not a large tip by Villa Verandah standards, but it commanded a dollar's worth of attention from a man dressed like a nineteenth-century Prussian general.

They walked into the lofty lobby — all white marble, plate glass, and stainless steel — and Co key nodded approval.

She had become suddenly quiet. As they ascended in the automatic elevator, Qwilleran gave her a quick private hug.

The door to David's apartment was opened by a white-coated Oriental, and there was a flash of recognition when he saw Qwilleran. No one ever forgot the newsman's moustache. Then the host surged forward, radiating charm, and Cokey slipped her hand though Qwilleran's arm. He felt her grip tighten when Lyke acknowledged the introduction with his rumbling voice and drooping eyelids.

The apartment was filled with guests — clients of David's chattering about their analysts, and fellow decorators discussing the Spanish exhibition at the museum and the new restaurant in Greektown.

"There's a simply marvelous seventeenth-century Isabellina vargueno in the show." "The restaurant will remind you of that little place in Athens near the Acropolis. You know the one." Qwilleran led Cokey to the buffet. "When I'm with decorators," he said, "I feel I'm in a never- never land. They never discuss anything serious or unpleasant." "Decorators have only two worries: discontinued patterns and slow deliveries," Cokey said. "They have no real problems." There was scorn in the curl of her lips.

"Such disapproval can't be purely professional. I suspect you were jilted by a decorator once." "Or twice." She smoothed her long straight hair self-consciously. "Try these little crabmeat things. They've got lots of pepper in them." Although Qwilleran had dined recently and well, he had no difficulty in trying the lobster salad, the crusty brown potato balls flavored with garlic, the strips of ginger-spiced beef skewered on slivers of bamboo, and the hot buttered cornbread filled with ham. He had a feeling of well-being. He looked at Cokey with satisfaction. He liked her spirit, and the provocative face peeking out from that curtain of hair, and the coltish grace of her figure.

Then he glanced over her shoulder toward the living room, and suddenly Cokey looked plain. Natalie Noyton had arrived.

Harry Noyton's ex-wife was plump in all areas except for an incongruously small waist and tiny ankles. Her face was pretty, like a peach, and she had peach-colored hair ballooning about her head.