Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

Either somebody is fitfully beating on a hollow tin drum…or the trash cans are rocking in the wind. Or somebody is trying to stuff a body in ’em. Or, more likely, pull one out for supper.

I did mention that this was a rough crowd. Of course now you cannot see a soul, not even a rat.

That is how I know I am just where I want to be.

I sit down to survey the place, casually clipping my toenails in the light of the only working streetlight within six blocks.

While sharpening my shivs, I regard a street in ill repair that cuts like a rusty knife through what amounts to one big empty lot.

Islands of trash thrust up from the flat desert landscape here and there. I recognize articles of furniture missing stuffing and upholstery, and large black-green garbage bags big enough and lumpy enough to hold sufficient dead bodies to populate a zombie movie, and maybe a sequel or two. Broken amber-colored empty bottles exhale the sour stench of beer so flat it is looking for a singing teacher.

However, my connoisseur’s sniffer notices something else among the odors of decay: the whiff of fish. Oh, it is not the delicate, scaly scent of freshly caught fish, such as you find at the edge of a koi pond, but the odor of the canned stuff they sell in the stores. Being that my old man was once the mascot on a Pacific Northwest salmon boat, I prefer to catch my own, but it is clear that the pre-caught kind of fish is here to catch something else.

I rise and swagger over to the nearest hummock of trash.

It is not long before I am close enough to notice something familiar jammed in among what is left of somebody’s Tia Evita floral reclining chair. I spot the familiar crosshatching of thin gray metal wires.

Normally such sights give me a chill of apprehension, but tonight I emit a soft purr of satisfaction instead. Everything is as bad as I had hoped it would be.

In not too long a time, I shall be at the mercy of the most fearsome street gang this old town has ever seen.

What I do to keep my Miss Temple out of danger and in arch supports.

Midnight Consultation

Max stretched, pushed Temple’s compilation of dead people aside, and consulted the watch on his right wrist as his long arms folded around her.

“Almost the witching hour. We could tune in Mr. Midnight for a bedtime treat.”

“Listening to a bunch of strangers whine about the personal lives they don’t have? Not me.”

“You’re not a fan?”

Temple yawned pointedly. “Who can stay up that late anymore?”

“You’re right. I should let you get your beauty sleep.”

“Since when have you ever done anything you ‘should’ do? Max, what’s the matter?”

“What isn’t the matter? Listen, Temple. You stood by me like, I don’t know, like the brave little drummer girl, when everyone thought I was a cad and coward and a murderer.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, mostly Molina, but she carries a lot of weight. It’s not fair for me to ask this, but you might have to do it again.”

“Stand up to Molina?”

“Always. I mean, stand by me.”

“What’s happening?”

“I can’t quite tell. Can’t quite say. I don’t know what to think. I know.” He laughed ruefully. “That’s not like me. This is getting too much like Northern Ireland. Foes and friends mixed together in one bloody stew. You start to question friends, you start to sympathize with foes, and the upshot is almost always betrayal and death.”

“Max! You’ve never talked this way before.”

“I’ve never been here, in this precise position before.” His hands touched her shoulders, then his thumbs reached up to caress her cheeks. “You’re sharp. You’re nobody’s fool. You might hear some things about me. Don’t believe them. No matter who they come from. I know. You’ve done it before, but it’ll be worse now. What I’ve found is worse.”

“The Synth?”

“No, nothing that exotic! Something down-home and downtown. Just remember, if I’m suspect, it might be because other people are more suspect.”

“People? Or person? Is it this Nadir guy?”

Temple watched her stab in the dark ricochet off the wary expression in Max’s blue eyes, like a stone skipping across one of her native state’s vaunted ten thousand lakes, never quite connecting with anything, defying gravity, just defying. Everything.

She was close, but still too far away.

“Does it have something to do with Molina?”

“It always has something to do with Molina,” he answered, laughing bitterly. “Try to keep it between us, Temple. Can you?”

“I always have,” she said, no longer certain she could.

DOD: Domesticated or Dead

No sooner I have applied myself to sniffing around the silver mesh than I sense a change in the air.

I do not hear a thing, mind you. Yet the empty space surrounding me has suddenly become not so empty. It cannot be rats. Rats cannot retract their shivs, so they always announce themselves, like Miss Temple in her high heels. Also, rats cannot refrain from chittering when excited, and the gang I expect knows how to keep its lips zipped tighter than a leather bustier on Pamela Anderson.

I flick a nail at the pungent glop of fish before me, then say right out loud, “Sucker bait. One bite and boom! You are in stir.”

I turn to regard my audience. Gack. Imagine a ragtag road show of CATS! with the entire cast recruited from a feline West Side Story .

These dudes are lean, edgy, and ravenous. Their shivs nervously scrape the cracked asphalt. Their whiskers are broken and twitching. I spot one poor sod who was in a rumble with a car. His untended broken leg sticks out at such a bizarre angle he can only walk on his knee. I notice a duke’s mixture of ragged ears — some neatly notched — and crooked tails, not to mention fresh and festering wounds. As for coats, this crowd looks like it has just come from the Ragpickers’ Ball. Exiting through a shredder.

There must be a dozen of them. Three or four start circling me so somebody is always at my back no matter which way I turn.

This is when prior planning pays off. I retreat until I am pressing the nap of my coat flat against one wall of the wire grille. After this gig I will look like I am wearing monotone plaid from the back, but sartorial concerns are the last thing on my mind.

These are not just tough and desperate dudes; this is the original Wild Bunch.

A big tiger-stripe pushes forward until his fangs are in my face. “You got a lot of nerve coming onto our turf, a downtown dude like you.”

This I already know, so I say nothing.

A marmalade tom with a broken front fang pushes so close I can inhale the Whiskas-lickings on his breath. “Fee, fie, foe, fumbug! I smell human on your lapels. You are a housebroken cat.”

“Not true,” I hiss back. “I do happen to occupy a co-op off the Strip, but I come and go as I please and when and where I please.”

“Where is your collar, dude?” taunts a once-white semi-long-hair I hesitate to describe as a lady. “No vet tags, Prince Chauncey?”

“Yeah,” the tiger-stripe adds. “We need an address for where to send the body.”

“At least I do not live in a road-kill academy.” I glance at the street. “I bet they drag race their lowriders so regular along there that a lot of you end up as poster boys and girls: flat as a face card in a fixed deck.”