Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“What’s expensive is faddish,” Tony added. “Wealthy zoot suiters wore multiple gold ‘watch chains’ looped down to their ankles. Poor guys yanked toilet chains off old-style tanks and used them. The point was, WASPs didn’t wear them. The underclasses did. And during World War Two sailors took offence and beat and stripped the zoot suiters.”

“That’s not faddish fun,” Matt said. “That’s a horrible footnote of history. How can people be dressing in zoot suits now and dancing down stairs in cat food commercials?”

“Because we’ve gotten over teen fads and outcast castes,” Temple said. “Not totally, but the creativity and expressiveness of that time and those people has been integrated into our cultural fabric. So we can share the fun and enthusiasm without the negative connotations.”

“This is way too deep for cat food commercials,” Matt said.

“Maybe not,” Temple said. “The zoot suit rebellion has been declawed by a lot of decades of social progress. The next step after belated acceptance is celebration.”

“So you’re saying cat food commercials can be relevant social commentary?” Matt sounded and looked dubious.

Temple shrugged. “I’m saying people just want to have fun. Don’t overthink it and maybe they’ll accidentally learn something. That top-notch director they want?” Temple asked Tony. “Danny Dove right here in town would be great at that.”

Tony was surprised. “The choreographer?”

“Set designer too. Catch the Black & White rock-group show with French Vanilla at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. Danny designed both the fixed and moving stage settings. WOW ,” Temple said. “Maybe the ads can start out in noir black-and-white, and then, POW , go to Technicolor, like The Wizard of Oz movie.”

“That’s a hot ticket,” Tony agreed. “She’s quite the idea girl,” he told Matt before turning back to Temple. “It was your Zoe Chloe Ozone persona that inspired the network.”

“That old blog and podcast stuff from the teen reality show?” Temple shook her head and sighed. “It’s dead in the water and has been for months. Fads fade at warp speed in today’s media world.”

“And a good thing,” Matt put in. He eyed Tony. “She went undercover with that persona and nearly got killed.”

“As she said, nothing dies on the Internet. Matt. Zoe Chloe is still out there. There could be a TV tour in this and you’re perfect for that,” he told Temple.

“Would Louie have to travel?” Temple wondered.

“Perhaps. Is that a problem?”

“ Nooo ,” Temple said. “He’s got a brand-new zebra-print carrier for the job. He’d look fab in a zebra-print fedora. Or zoot suit.”

“Whoa, Temple,” Matt said. “He would not love wearing the suit, I bet, and do you really want to tote a twenty-pound cat on and off a plane? Airlines don’t even provide room for under-seat shaving kits or feet these days.”

“First class,” Tony said, “would be in the contract. And media escorts. Don’t worry, Matt. I’d see your fiancée is treated like a queen, or at least a bestselling author.”

“Say,” Temple sat up taller. “I could write a book about Louie!”

Tony made a note on his leather-bound legal notepad.

Matt groaned. “Tony, Temple and I need to think and we need to talk this over. It could be hell moving to Chicago with Temple starting such multi-pronged media project.”

“Of course.” Tony eased back in his chair. “I see this as complex, yes, but fortuitous.”

“The network hasn’t been pestering me,” Matt said, “or you, about my possible national TV talk show gig. Meanwhile, every celebrity and his and her siblings are starting new shows.”

Tony grew serious. “True. You’ve played pretty hard to get.”

“I’m not playing anything, Tony. My mother just remarried and Temple and I are thinking about scheduling a wedding. I don’t want us to be rushed into something so demanding it’ll ruin our private lives.”

“Very sensible,” he said, standing to end the visit. “Keep this top secret. Buzz blows deals as often as it hypes them. If you have any questions, let me know. This is only in the development stages. It’s good to know about, because you both can still have a lot of input now.”

Matt shook, and then Temple shook, Tony’s soft manicured hand.

At the door Temple turned. “And I do have to ask Louie if he wants to do this.”

“How would you know?” Tony asked.

“Oh, Louie knows how to make his druthers known, don’t worry.”

26

The Minstrel Boy

Max’s heart was pounding. He felt he’d been making a pilgrimage commemorating the Stations of the Cross over all of Ireland, south and north, with Kathleen. The fourteen harsh images often hung on Catholic church walls, memorializing Jesus’s suffering, crucifixion, and death…and, sometimes a last image, a happy ending, the resurrection.

Sometimes Max thought the Church fixated on darkness. Yet now, so did Max. This journey, he hoped, would end at the grave of the best man he’d ever known, but first he must deal with the unsuspected living. He hoped he was on the brink of witnessing a rising from the dead.

Kathleen, practicing the controlling cruelty that had dominated her childhood, had told Max nothing, nothing about his cousin. Only that Sean was alive. That Sean was alive and now they were here, in County Tyrone of Northern Ireland, where he and Sean had gone astray on a quest for their roots and “adventure” tourism.

He stood with Kathleen before a quaint white-washed cottage. Ireland was breathtakingly picturesque, but traditionally the land and people were poor, with a harsh and tragic history. The only thing the modern Emerald Isle had to sell was charm until the “Celtic Tiger” awakened in the ’80s with a burst of high-tech businesses. Then a second Irish “famine” came with the global recession.

Max took in every feature of the simple building—the gravel driveway with a green iron gate. The house, clad in white stone, was shaped like an arc or a simple church, a long main floor with an A-shaped second story. The windows weren’t in even rows. Simple narrow wood frames painted bright green dappled the white stone canvas here and there. Green window boxes on shallow stone sills spilled over with fuchsia, purple and white petunias, blooming as madly as any second-story pub window box in the British Isles.

This modest traditional home could be a whited sepulcher, hiding a blasted life behind its green-framed Irish charm.

Sean Kelly, Wisconsin boy by birth. Mourned and missed for almost twenty years. Max thought his thoughts sounded like an obituary. But, unless Kathleen had played the sadist again, Sean was somewhere behind that bright green-painted wooden door, breathing the same clean, earthy Irish air that had Max close to hyperventilating. He hoped Sean wasn’t under a gravestone in the back garden. He wouldn’t put it past Kathleen to “mirror” his past to match the tragedy of hers.

Max’s training as a magician had made him seem eternally cool and collected and had served well onstage and under cover. And now…now he was a bipolar boy again, one moment agonizingly unsure and an instant later filled with a cocky conviction he would soon be master of his own life and druthers, he would know the truth fully and master his fears and guilt.

Maybe, Max thought, this was his moment for finally growing up.

Kathleen sighed, ruefully. “Ah, so green it is, so white the stone, so black the hearts. So charming the accents, so savage the hypocrisy.”