David Handler - The Bright Silver Star

Des felt that there was something deliberately pointy about the words Esme used to describe her parents. Crouched there beside her on the pavement, Martine definitely seemed ill at ease.

“Tito never knew any of those things. That’s why he’s so out there as an actor. It’s like he’s experiencing everything for the first time.”

Des thought she heard some small movements now in the forsythia bushes out behind the Dumpster. “We better get on that other trap,” she whispered, tiptoeing around to the other cage and grabbing on to the string attached to its door.

Esme joined her. “Here, let me,” she whispered, holding her hand out to Des.

That was when Des noticed the thin white lines on the inside of her wrist. Both wrists, in fact. On-screen, the makeup artists were able to cover them over. But up close and in person Des saw them instantly for what they were. Esme Crockett had tried to slit her wrists at some point in her past. Des found herself wondering what could possibly have driven someone so lovely, gifted, and privileged to want to end her life?

“Shhh, hear them…?” she whispered, clutching the string anxiously.

Des did hear the tiny mewings. And now she could see the two of them coming out of the brush together. They were mixed gray, no more than four or five weeks old.

“Aren’t they the sweetest?”

Des didn’t like the unsteady way they were moving.

“Hi, babies,” Esme cooed as they edged hungrily toward the baited cage, moving closer and closer. “Come get your breakfast… Come on, babies…”

Until they were inside the cage and Esme had yanked the door shut behind them.

“In the house!” Des called out, latching it shut.

Bella and Martine immediately joined them.

“I can’t wait for Tito to see them!” Esme cried excitedly, clapping her hands together with girlish delight. “We’re going to name them Spike and Mike.”

Martine stood there looking down at them in grim silence. So did Bella.

“What, don’t they look like a Spike and a Mike?” Esme asked.

What they looked like, all three rescuers knew only too well, was a pair of very, very sick little kitties. Their eyes were rheumy, their noses caked with pus, coats scabby and oozing with sores. Feline influenza, most likely. It was very common in the summer. If left untreated, it often led to pneumonia.

“They look awfully sick to me, honey,” Martine said gently. “I think we’d better take them to the vet.”

“What do you think, Des?” Esme asked.

“I don’t meant to be your dream killer, but I think you should prepare yourself for the worst.”

Esme let out a gasp of horror. “You mean he might put them to sleep?”

“They’re very sick, tattela.”

“It was real nice of you to alert us,” Des added. “You’ve done them a solid, because they’re so miserable.”

“Mommy, noooo!” Esme threw herself into Martine’s arms, weeping.

“We’ll get you another pair,” Martine promised, hugging her tightly.

“I don’t want another pair! I want Spike and Mike! They’re ours! We found them!” Now Esme released her mother, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be such a baby. This is just so sad. And it’s not their fault.”

“Me, I’d like to take a baseball bat to whoever dumped them here,” Bella growled.

“We do everything we can, honey,” Martine said. “We get them neutered. We find homes for as many as we can. But the truth is that there are just too many kittens and not enough people to love them.”

“Now, if you’d like to adopt a couple of good, healthy ones,” Des offered brightly, “we can certainly help you out.”

Esme tilted her head at Des curiously. “You mean you have some at your place?”

“We, uh, happen to have a few.” Twenty-eight at last count. “Come on over, girl. Check’em out.”

“No, no,” Esme said abruptly. “I mean, thanks, but I don’t think so.”

Martine Crockett took her daughter by the hand now and led her back to Martine’s 1967 silver Volkswagon Beetle convertible. They got in and drove off. Des and Bella loaded the cage with the sick kittens into the back of Bella’s Jeep Wrangler with its personalized CATS22 license plate.

“What do you think?” Des asked her.

“I think Dr. Bill will put them down as soon as he lays eyes on them.”

“No, I mean about her.”

“Who, the great Esme Crockett?” Bella let out a hoot of derision. “I think she has the worst BO I ever smelled in my entire life.”

Why did Martine tell her about Dodge’s affair?

Des couldn’t imagine. Being human, she also couldn’t help wondering who the other woman was. She didn’t say anything about it to Bella on the way home-she’d promised Martine she’d keep quiet, and she did. But it was certainly on her mind as they dropped off Spike and Mike with Dr. Bill, knowing full well they’d never see those two helpless kittens again. It was still on her mind when they pulled into her driveway in gloomy silence. She and Bella always felt lousy when a rescue mission turned out sour.

Bella marched straight inside to scrub the kitchen floor and listen to one of her Danny Kaye records, which was what she did when she was blue. Des hung out in the garage for a while with the Pointer Sisters, Mary J. Blige, Bootsy Collins, Master P, Jay-Z and the others that they had rescued. She cooed at each of them, stroking the oneswho’d let her. Some, like Method Man, just hissed. No problem. He’d come around. Des was patient. She made sure they all had food and water, then went upstairs.

Des had bought and renovated a snug little cottage tucked into a hillside high above Uncas Lake. Mostly, she’d bought it for the sunlight. The living room, which she’d turned into her studio, had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the shimmering lake. Her kitchen and dining area were very airy and open, with French doors leading out onto the back deck, which had a teak dining table and chairs, and a dynamite view. The deck practically doubled her living space during warm months. There were three bedrooms, all of them small. The spare room was where Des worked out with twenty-pound dumbbells five mornings a week. Her weight room door was closed currently and there was a steady chorus of meows going on in there. Their five in-house cats were unable to resist the allure of a wet kitchen floor-whenever Bella was in scrub mode she herded them in there.

Des kept a portrait that she’d drawn of Mitch hanging over her bed. She’d drawn it when she was still trying to figure out how she felt about him. He looked very lost and sad in the portrait. He didn’t look nearly so sad now. It was the only sample of her art that was visible anywhere in the house. She did not display her haunting portraits of murder victims that were her life’s work and her way of coping with the horrors of her job. These she kept tucked away in a portfolio.

She did not like to look at them after she’d finished them.

Right now, Des snatched a graphite stick and Strathmore eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch sketch pad from her easel and started across the house with them as Mr. Danny Kaye was busy singing “Madam, I Love Your Crepes Suzette.” Or make that shrieking. Des did not understand that man’s appeal. Apparently, you had to be Jewish, old, and from Brooklyn in order to dig him. Also, possibly, deaf.

“I put your breakfast out on the deck,” Bella called to her from the kitchen floor, where she was on her hands and knees, scrubbing away like an old-time washerwoman.

“You didn’t have to make me breakfast, Bella.”

“I did so,” Bella shot back, scrubbing, scrubbing. There was a sponge mop, but she wouldn’t go near it. “Otherwise you’ll tromp all over my wet floor with your big feet.”