David Handler: The Cold Blue Blood

Des groaned, feeling as if her own head had only just hit the pillow. It had. She’d worked late and squeezed in only four hours of sleep. Maybe she was too wedded to her job. Maybe there was no maybe about it. Yawning hugely, she fumbled for her horn-rimmed glasses and flicked on the nightstand light, blinking at the rest of the original Spice Girls-Ginger, Sporty, Posh and Baby. Tabby shorthairs, all of them. Predominately gray. Three months old. And maddeningly perky and bright-eyed, considering the hour. She and Bella had rescued them from the parking lot of an Outback Steakhouse in Shelton two weeks ago. Within days they had become snug muffins.

There was no man in her bed. No man in her life. Des Mitry was off men right now, having concluded that they were vastly overrated as a species. They required huge outlays of attention, care, feeding and patience and all you got back in return from them was a full laundry hamper, an empty refrigerator and a bladder infection. Nothing good came of them. Not one thing. So Des was going it alone for the foreseeable future. She was not looking for a relationship. In fact, she was the happiest she’d ever been, even though absolutely no one believed her. Single women were not supposed to be happy. That was one of the bedrock myths of modern American society, right up there with the invincibility of four-wheel drive, the great taste of lite beer and the guarantee of equal justice for all.

She did not make the bed. After four years at West Point, Des took great, sinful pleasure in having a sloppy, unmade bed. For her it was a feeling comparable to that of sinking into a hot bubble bath with a flute of cold Moet and Robert Cray crying his heart out on her stereo. She stretched her lower back and touched her toes, her dreadlocks brushing the floor. She stripped off her T-shirt and hung it on the back of the master bathroom door. She dressed in sweatpants and a New York Giants jersey.

Barefoot, she padded downstairs and into the kitchen to put the coffee on, the Spice Girls meowing in harmony as they tripped over her ankles and one another in starved, eager pursuit. The house was a three-bedroom raised ranch on a dead-end road in Woodbridge, a woodsy suburb of New Haven that was popular with Yale mathematicians and lab geeks, many of whom were Asian or Middle Eastern. The assorted cooking smells were unbelievable when Des managed to get in a jog at suppertime. It was a family neighborhood. Other than Bella, her next-door neighbor, Des was the only person on the block who lived alone.

Des also happened to be the only person on the block who was black.

She and Brandon bought the place right after they got married. They built themselves a redwood deck onto the back, complete with hot tub. Remodeled the kitchen. Refinished the oak floors. Invested in fine furniture of leather and teak. It was a home to be proud of when they were done with it. It was their Love Shack. And Des did think about unloading it after the bust-up, finding someplace smaller. It was certainly more house than she needed. But she’d have to pay a whopping tax bill if she did that, so why not keep it? The overhead was manageable. It was a half-hour drive from work. And she enjoyed taking care of it. Particularly the acre and a half of yard. She did all of the outdoor work herself. Des absolutely loved riding around on her mower. Actually, it was not natural how much Des loved that Toro. She was starting to become convinced that in a previous life she had been an Iowa hog farmer.

She put down food for the girls while the coffee was brewing. Then she checked on the rest of her guests. Spinderella, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim and Jam Master Jay were getting along just fine in her basement, one to a padded crate. Milli Vanilli-Fab and Rob-had the garage to themselves since they could only seem to get along with each other. Those two had been full-grown adults when Des rescued them. The adult feral strays were the hardest. It took time to earn their trust. It took patience and gentleness. A lot of her new arrivals had to be kept somewhere solitary and small, like her guest bathroom, for several weeks before they were ready to venture out. Right now, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, a surly black strutter, was decompressing in her mud room. She went in and spent a couple of minutes with him on her knees, her hand stretched out to him, softly cooing, “Your father must be hydrogen, because you da bomb, Daddy.” She said that to him every morning and night, and every morning and night he hissed and swatted at her outstretched hand. He would eat her food and drink her water but he would not let her near him.

This did not deter Des, who was partial to the ungrateful badasses. She regarded them as a challenge. She loved a challenge.

The average life span of a feral stray was less than two years. They battled starvation, disease, predators and one another. But in spite of this they managed to reproduce at such an appallingly high rate that the animal shelters were unable to keep up. It was a crisis. Crises called for action. And so Des and Bella were taking action. To date, they had rescued over forty feral strays. They took them straight to the local vet, Dr. John, who promptly checked them over for worms and ear mites and vaccinated them against distemper, rabies and feline leukemia. He also neutered them-all this free of charge. Dr. John applauded Des and Bella’s concern. He was also partial to Des’s form, especially when she was in her spandex running tights.

Right now, Des could hear Bella’s garage door opening. It was time to move out. They’d gotten a tip: Donna in produce at the A amp; P on Amity Road had overheard her manager-a real dick-say that he was going to call the animal shelter people about the half-dozen adult strays that were hanging around the Dumpsters out back. The animal shelter was a kill facility. Consequently, such a pronouncement was akin to genocide.

Consequently, Des and Bella were on Dawn Patrol.

Des grabbed her coffee and headed on out into the predawn darkness with it. Bella was waiting for her behind the wheel of her Jeep Wrangler in her driveway, engine idling, the back crowded with cages, have-a-heart traps and food. The personalized license plate on Bella’s Jeep read CATS22.

“Hey, girl,” Des said as she hopped in.

“Hey back at you,” Bella exclaimed brightly, her chubby fists gripping the wheel. “Desiree, how is it that you manage to look so gorgeous at five o’clock in the morning?”

“Um, okay, you forgot to put your contact lenses in again, Bella. I’d better drive.”

“I mean it, Desiree,” she insisted, handing her a shopping bag from her lap. “Stuffed cabbage. I made it last night. Just heat it and eat it.”

“Bella, why do you keep feeding me?” Des objected, smiling at her.

“Because you’re a healthy young girl and you need to eat. I don’t want to see you turn into some little wasted thing like that Ally McBeal person.”

“That I would pay to see,” laughed Des, who was six-foot-one in her stockinged feet, broad-shouldered, high-rumped and cut with muscle.

Bella Tillis, on the other hand, was an inch under five feet tall and totally round, a feisty, silver-haired little bowling ball of a Brooklyn Jewish widow in her early seventies. Her late husband, Morris, had been on the Yale Medical School faculty. Bella had three kids scattered around the Northeast, eight grandchildren and nine million causes. Around Woodbridge she was known as the Queen of Petition drives. Lately, she had been harnessing her considerable energies toward raising money for a No Kill shelter.

“What’s up with you today?” Des asked her as they went rocketing down the sleepy lane in the Jeep. Bella drove like a demon.

“Clothing drive over at the shul later this morning,” Bella replied, chin thrust up into the air over the steering wheel. Her legs were so short that she had to shove her seat up right against it, practically squashing her breasts. “Have you got any old clothes?”