Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

In the hall she pushed a button. Track fixtures all along the ceiling splashed slashes of light on the huge canvases lining the walls. It was like touring a Byzantine gallery--formal figures, almost totemic, men and women touched with barbarian flashes of gold leaf. He couldn't tell if they were shamans or saints, often if they were male or female, but all shared the trait of great personal power, of a brooding bitter spirituality that was quite the opposite of the sunny studio with the flower patterns splattered against white wicker.

He followed her into the main rooms to find the painting sequence commanding the wood-paneled walls there like Easter Island colossi flattened into pigment and then pressed onto canvas, like relatives who came to call and were impaled onto the walls.

"These are such inhuman figures," he commented.

She stopped, and smiled over her shoulder. "Funny, I used to know them all. I think maybe they were even more inhuman then."

"Do you have a theme? A--" He couldn't think of anything else to ask ... a reason, he meant. An explanation for such a strong and bitter vision.

She shook her head and led him into another, smaller room. They were in the opposite wing, a bedroom wing, and this was a child's room. A little girl's, to judge by the row of stuffed-animal figures on the single bed.

"That's the kind of family portrait work I do." Janice pointed to a pair of pictures at the bed's head.

He went closer to see. Full-faced children, the boy about eight, the girl younger. Their noses, chins, cheeks were plastic yet round and damp and undefined. Grave black eyes occupied almost all of their sockets as if their adult selves were imprisoned behind the mushy facades, peering out from peepholes a size too small.

"Lovely," he said, "but sad."

"Of course they're sad. They have to grow up."

Beyond the window Matt could see a corner of the yard, bright and pale in the autumn sunlight. Inside, the house was shadowed, secretive somehow.

Down the hall, the clock ticked.

Janice leaned against the pale lavender wall, hands behind her so she looked like a prisoner too. "I love them dearly, but sometimes-- these computer and summer-camp times--I appreciate the freedom."

"You're . . . alone with them?"

"Divorced, yes." Her look was direct. "Single parent is the proper oxymoronic expression, I believe. No Sweeney on site."

Until then he hadn't seen it, guessed it. He felt cornered, although she was the one who had her back to the wall.

He felt the immaculately kept, charmingly decorated, empty house all around him, holding its breath. This was a child's bedroom, there would be others, another, all empty, charming, waiting.

The clock ticked, measuring moments, and this one was trembling on the brink far too long.

His fault, of course, for being so stunned, for wondering if he were imagining things, for t hinking what he was thinking . . .

Which was that she was even more charming than her house, an artist full of energy and compassion, a quite-attractive woman who probably had far too few occasions to prove it. . .

Which was that no one was expected here for some time, maybe hours, maybe days . ..

Which was that adults did these things, acted on impulse, forgot that the clock always ticked and that one was supposed to be someplace else ...

Which was what harm would it do if care were exercised and both were certain to keep it tunelessly exciting and distant, and if loneliness got lost in the shuffle and no one would know and no one would be hurt, least of all the parties involved who were strangers and therefore risked less even as they risked more . ..

And he almost could see it, could see safety in a stranger, could see disguise in nakedness, could see just getting it over with, suddenly, for once and for all, in circumstances that could be called a dozen different things, not one of them premeditated ...

And he could see how nothing could be said and everything, and how no one could be to blame and everyone, and how people could do it all the time, maybe not the same people, but the same thing happening everywhere all the time . ..

And why not to him?

"Thank you," he said, and left the room.

Chapter 12

Midnight Munchies

This just missed being my unlucky last chapter, set at a feline funeral parlor, which is to say an anonymous little bonfire at Smoke Rise Farm.

While I am dying to learn what others may say about me once I am dead, I am also willing to leave this terminal bit of feline curiosity unfulfilled for quite some time. Nor am I ready to don the ashen mantle of the late Maurice One and his ilk. Besides, I have never been one to leave a feather or a fur unruffled, so for me Cat Heaven would be Hell, as bad as the state pen for a cop gone bad: a place full of old foes waiting to make my Afterlife as miserable as I made their Fore-life.

But those who hand Midnight Louie a banana peel to slip on usually have to watch me dance my way out of danger and come up singing, with a banana split.

And so it went at Gangster's. While I nearly did the splits avoiding the trip wire Maurice Two laid in my path, I managed to land on all fours (on my proper mark too) and am the cynosure of all eyes. (I am not sure what this cynosure is, but being a long, odd word, it must be hot stuff.) The director has flipped his toupee over my agile escape antics, only he interprets it as a "cat soft-shoe."

The dude whose suit I ruined while using it for a ladder to his shoulder is not complaining, as he will now have a close-up in the A La Cat commercial, for which he will have to give permission and therefore get paid. He is babbling to his fellow hoofers about his "big break" while the costumer is trying to pull snagged threads smooth and whimpering about having to resew from scratch, so to speak.

Meanwhile the Divine Yvette has taken advantage of her freedom and t he resulting flurry to rub back and forth most provocatively against my ruffled suit coat, purring, "You are such a natural performer, Louie. What an improviser! You must teach me that little jazz step you did on the way down; we would look great together and I would get more close-ups. This is my commercial, after all, big boy."

There is a bit of a subdued growl in her last words, but I do not blame her for coveting more camera time. So I turn my skin-saving routine into a simple cha-cha-cha, and she picks it up right away.

"Film that!" the director barks. "We can save a pile on computer animation if these cats keep up the good work."

So I get to do a little victory dance with my honey. Even the stupid flamingo fedora does not seem so bad at the moment.

"Get Louie's face tight," Kyle orders. "He looks like the cat that swallowed the canary, and that is how a consumer of A La Cat should look. What a natural!"

Natural nothing! Although I show my usual savoir faire and aplomb, my stomach is in imminent revolt, not from my shocking plummet down the stairs, but from the lump of A La Cat I was forced to consume on camera. Ugh! It feels like one of those fabric-stuffed mice people are always forcing on undiscriminating house cats, a soggy, cotton-flannel wad in my stomach. I burp and the director goes ballistic.

"He burped! Did you get that? Great. We can put some really macho sound under it--after all, this is the alley cat--and intercut it with a shot of the blonde licking her dainty whiskers. That burp really says 'satisfied customer.' Hey, this is gonna work."

Well, nobody likes a happy director more than a performer, but I suspect that Miss Temple will be the beneficiary of a humongous hair ball on her coverlet around 3 a.m. this morning.

While I am the center of all attention, I cast a glance to the top of the stairs.