Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“Not permanently. I’m up for the lead in a cat food commercial.”

“Really?”

“They are searching for the perfect partner for me. A Bombay is the leading candidate.”

I shake my head. “Too rangy, too shorthaired. Your unique appeal would be better enhanced by contrast, not a competitor.”

“What did you have in mind?”

I polish my nails on my exquisitely groomed vest. “Sophisticated dude about town, formal black coat, luxurious satin lapels. The Cary Grant type.”

“Hmmm. You must come up and see me sometime.”

“Ah…I think I have done so already. I mean, an attic is ‘up,’ right?”

“This is no attic.” Hyacinth shows me her scrawny tail as she turns and slinks along the wall toward the stairs.

I follow, as I wish to give Mr. Max free rein.

“This,” Hyacinth goes on, “was a ballroom, screening room, and assignation room for the late great film star Carissa Caine.”

“Now it is rehearsal hall,” I note.

“All things decay with time.”

We are retracing my steps down the stairs. I wonder if we are headed for the basement. Oh, joy. No doubt that is not a basement but a wine cellar, film vault, and temporary dungeon.

Above us, behind us, I hear man, woman, and cat debating their various roles in an illusion.

So where is Midnight Louise?

“As I was saying,” Hyacinth goes on, her lisping purr reminiscent of Peter Lorre in his more pussyfooted impersonations, “I might be able to put in a good word for you on the TV commercial circuit.”

“I have other fish to fry, or chow down at least. I could not care less about being an Á La Cat spokescat.”

“Other fish! You refer to your dubious appearance on the TV court show, no doubt, where you made a spectacle of yourself with that pallid little tart of a Persian.”

I bite my tongue. Literally. Such a description of the Divine Yvette is blasphemy to Bastet herself. But let the Goddess take her revenge in her own time. I am working undercover and must not betray my true purpose, which should be easy because I am not quite sure what it is yet.

“Yvette is a good match to her mistress, I suppose, although I do not think Savannah Ashleigh is of the Persian persuasion. And your own lovely mistress, what breed is she?”

“Shangri-La?” Hyacinth sits to add lip gloss to her already gleaming and unnaturally painted nails. “I have never seen her without her mask of makeup. We are both members of masked breeds, perhaps that is why we understand each other. She is small and lithe, like myself, and I flatter myself that she is of a similar kind, an ancient race from the East, wise and inscrutable.”

“ Hmmm ,” say I, who loathe the word inscrutable. To me it is a synonym for “stuck-up.”

“ Ommmm , Louie?” Hyacinth mistakenly quotes me. “Are you meditating? That is a very enlightened thing to do, perhaps more Indian than Asian.”

I am not about to remind her of the glorious Persian’s roots in Afghanistan, just above India. She does not seem capable of appreciating the many attributes of the Divine Yvette.

“ Ommm, hmmm ,” I reply diplomatically, managing to straddle both East and West. I am not convinced that Hyacinth even knows the origins of her deceptive mistress. I suppose I will have to leave solving that mystery up to Mr. Max.

I chafe, sorry to be no longer eavesdropping on the humans and the leopard upstairs.

Miss Hyacinth mistakes my unease for other urges.

“I am working,” she says shortly. “I do not have time for dalliances.”

Hallelujah!

“Now that we have met again, without prison bars between us,” I gabble like the lovesick swain.

“The bars between us were always of my doing, Louie. I am devoted to my role in life. My mistress has plans for us that are so much more ennobling than making fools of ourselves on stage or on sets. I realize that you have developed a hopeless passion for me, but you must realize that it is midlife crisis on your part. I am too far above you to encourage your pathetic attentions. I cannot allow myself to be distracted from my mission by personal concerns. You may kiss my hand before you go.”

Right. Like smack her in the kisser with my mitt. But she has handed me an advantage, however odious. So. I am an obsessed admirer, am I? Gives me an excuse to turn up where I need to. We obsessive types do not give up, do we? I get the impression this dame likes it that way. I let my eartips dip.

“I am desolate, chèr Hyacinth, but I understand, my dear llsa. I will remain here in Las Vegas, hunted and haunted, while you fly away to more elevated planes.”

She bats her demon blue eyes. (They look a lot like Lieutenant Molina’s peepers, come to think of it.) They wink like the three rows of faux blue topazes in her collar. (She wears a dog collar, of course, like any self-respecting subversive dominatrix rock diva.)

My eyes fasten on something below the collar…not her chest hairs! A gold charm dangles below the crystals and the shape is oddly familiar. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my avid interest is taken as personal rather than professional.

Hyacinth’s true-blue eyes cross with self-satisfaction. “Console yourself with that low-bred Persian, if you must, Louie. That would be for the best, rather than aspiring beyond your means. There is a certain tragic nobility in your dedication to such shop-worn goods.”

My shivs are itching to show Hyacinth some dedication she has never encountered before, but such is the role of the undercover operator. You must sometimes play Caspar Milquetoast. So I bat playfully at her neck instead, a clumsy gesture that she blocks with a right cross.

“I must truly leave?” I mew piteously.

“Alas, yes. And now!”

Yes, sir! She has shown me to an open window onto the dark, wide lawn leading back to the deceptive barrier of the cemetery.

I leap to the ledge. In like smoke, out like Flynn.

“Adieu, my lady fair.”

I pound down to the ground and hotfoot it across the sward before somebody unleashes the hounds of Hell that guard this weird outfit.

I sense Miss Hyacinth’s eyes upon my exit all the way to the exterior wall.

Good. More time bought for my partner-in-crime, Mr. Max Kinsella.

I just wish I knew where Miss Louise was.

Somewhere cushy, no doubt.

She can’t possibly have gotten into bigger trouble than I have.

Magicians at Work

Max found an upright curtained box to slip into like a man donning a cape.

Some people found upright, coffin-narrow boxes claustrophobic. To Max, they were home. Children were supposed to be seen but not heard.

He needed to be un seen, and unheard.

Gimme shelter. Put me on a stage, the invisible man incarnate.

Max eavesdropped, nostalgic, on the intermittent murmurs performance professionals make when they are rehearsing, as they consult one another.

The cage closer? You stand here? No, there. What about the cat? He’s fine where he is for now. And this turns when…? On a count of eight. And you are —? Here.

Max had worked solo, so his constant Q and A had been with a technical crew, not costars. Still, the ritual, the mind-numbing, boring repetitiveness of it, offered a stability and comfort he had found in nothing else. He wondered if that was what Matt Devine missed in saying the mass. He knew Matt Devine missed saying the mass. He had to.

You don’t give up a leading role in the theater, or the Church, without losing a primal connection to something bigger than yourself, something more than tradition, something intimate and sacred….