Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"Funny. She says dinner."

"Dinner too. Later. And we hit it off. She's really kind of neat."

"For somebody who lives in New York City, I suppose so. Are you still planning to stay out there?"

"Here? In Vegas?"

"Vegas. It sounds like the name of a gas cloud, or something. Not like anywhere normal people live. I wish you'd move back home, and get a good job like you had before."

"I have a good job. In fact, I have a better job. I've just been ... hired to supervise the repositioning of a Strip hotel."

"Repositioning? Why can't it stay where it is, and why can't you come back home where you belong? All your brothers and sisters miss you--"

"And I miss them, but I can visit."

"You haven't."

Temple was silent.

"You can't imagine," her mother went on in her pleasantly singsong Minnesota voice, "how odd it is to get more news about you from my sister that I haven't seen in twelve years, than from you, my own daughter."

"What news?"

"Well, I didn't want to ask right out... but Ursula never mentioned Him."

"Him?"

"You know, That Man."

"That man?"

"The magician," her mother said grudgingly. "The cradle robber."

"I was hardly in the cradle, Mother."

"Temple, you like to think you're mature, but no one really is until--"

Thirty-five , Temple filled in the blank.

"--at least thirty-five."

"You had three kids by then."

"How do you think I got so mature so fast? You don't have any kids--"

"I have a cat." Temple threw in the child substitute. "Did Aunt Ursula mention that?"

"Nothing about a cat. I hope it's .. . sanitary. You did get all the proper shots? Cat scratch fever--"

"He's fine! He's shot up from one side to the other. He's safe. Pure as the driven snow, except he's black as coal."

"Temple. You haven't been out with some fast crowd that's ... you know, drinking?"

"I'm of legal age, Mother."

"Chronological age means nothing."

Temple rolled her eyes and ground her teeth, and thanked God and Ma Bell that TV-phones were not common yet. Every mother on Earth would have one.

"About this magician," her mother went on. "Did you happen to get rid of him?"

He got rid of me, Mother! But Temple didn't say that. It would be more evidence that her darling daughter was not capable of running her own life.

"Max is fine," Temple said, so calmly she almost looked around to make sure that it was she who had spoken.

"Urn. Well, I was surprised to hear from Ursula at such length. She says the bookstore is fine, though one wonders how much money she can be making on what selling books can pay."

Oodles, Mother. If you happen to be a best-selling author named Sulah Savage, which you aren't, because your baby sister is! And your baby daughter isn't doing too badly either!

"I'm sure Aunt Ursula's doing all right, Mom. And so am I."

"Are you sure? Temple, your father and I--and all your brothers and sisters--are very worried about you. You are our baby, you know."

I know, I know!

"Thanks, Mom. But I'm fine."

Temple sighed, realizing that she wasn't fine at all. But she was surviving, which was enough for her, and ought to be enough for them.

"You sound--"

"Harried, Mom. I've got a lot on my mind."

"Working late? You shouldn't let people take advantage of you."

"I work for myself, so if anyone's taking advantage of me, it's me. Actually my main project right now is ... an eminent magician I'm hoping to interview."

"Another magician! I hope you're not going to see him alone."

"No, I'm not. A slew of colleagues are sure to be present. And this eminent magician is very elderly."

"Oh?"-- Like a hundred and twenty-four , Temple was tempted to reply, and the name's Houdini --"Who is he?"

What a web we weave when we attempt to twist the truth into an origami ostrich. Temple heard herself saying something even more unlikely. "Orson Welles. Bet you didn't know he was a magician, too."

"Orson Welles? The Napa Valley wine man who used to write science fiction movies? He is old. But, Temple dear, isn't he ... didn't I hear someplace that he ... died?"

"Not permanently, Mother. Now I really have to run. I'm late. Talk to you later. Bye."

"Bye-bye, sweetie. Make sure you cover your head now that fall is here, and wear those mittens we sent you for Christmas three years ago--"

"Yes, Mother. Thanks for calling. Say hi to everybody."

Temple heard a disconnecting click and breathed again. What had Kit said in her letter?

Nothing to give away her own game, you can bet your best Minnesota muffler!

Still, she paused, rerunning the conversation. She hoped she hadn't been too abrupt. Mom was used to her frantic public relations lifestyle, but she would have been alarmed by the slightly flaky idea of reviving Houdini. Mom only meant well. It was hard to let go of the youngest, because then you were older than you wanted to be. Someday her mother wouldn't be around to call her, or to call, and then Temple would be sorry. She sighed. Guilt was a terrible thing to waste.

Hey, maybe she underestimated the Afterlife. Look at Houdini and his devotion to mama from both sides of the grave. Maybe, with a little help from her new psychic friends, including Karma and Louie, she could always dial up the Beyond for the usual dose of maternal fussing.

****************

"Son, son," the shade called in a voice of longing, which happened to be broken English with a strong German accent.

"Mother!" The man's voice was strong, but emotion-laden.

"So long, Ehrich. And I have wish to tell you . . . "

"I've waited for a word, a single word. If Yd only been there when you passed on, Mother.

You know you are the Queen of my Heart. I've told the world you are. I've wept on your grave at twelve-fifteen in the morning, the time you died. You know of my devotion, don't you? Don't you?"

"Always, my boy. Always my boy."

"But I must know, the word you meant to tell me when you died, and I an entire ocean away.

I came back, sick though the waves made me. I would not let them bury you until I had come to lay my head on your heart, your life, one last time. You were silent, Mother, through no fault of your own. I was a madman. I sought mediums to find you. What were you going to tell me?"

"You are with me, Ehrich. Always."

"But the message? I have lived in torment, needing to know what word you wanted to give me. I tried to chase down Death, and he finally slowed enough that I could catch him. But even Death did not know, nor poor Bess who survived me. What would you have said to me, Mother, had I come in time?"

"A word, Ehrich. No one hears enough, that word"

"Now! Can you say it now, in this vast emptiness that still is my heart?"

"Yes, dear one. One word. 'Forgive.' "

"Forgive. I was not sure, so I could not."

"Now you can, son."

"Now . .. is not then."

"Forgive, son. Forgive."

"And then I will forget?"

"Yes."

"But will they forget Houdini?"

"Not now."

"No?"

"Not... yet"

Chapter 27

A Sign from Cat Heaven

Quite frankly, I do not have a superstitious bone in my body.

Then what, you could quite rightly ask, is that very body doing back in the now-closed haunted house, right in the middle of a coven of cats, adding the deep bass of my perfect-pitch purr to the general catophony in progress? (We do indeed sound like a convention of pitch pipes, all stuck on the same note.)