by G M Eppers
When we got there Billings, Roxy, the twins, Sylvia and Sir Haughty were milling in the foyer, scrolling through the report from Miss Chiff. The three of us split up, racing to our respective rooms. I grabbed the go bag I had prepared earlier, then caught myself stopping to look around the room. The potential implications of the wedding were making me feel maudlin and nostalgic for things I hadn’t even lost yet. Knock it off, I told myself. Focus.
I was the first one to come back downstairs. Roxy was in a mauve gown of layered tulle, with slightly padded shoulders and a sweetheart neckline. I couldn’t see her shoes, but judging from her height I was guessing she’d conservatively chosen mere three-inch heels. Sir Haughty had his go bag and the CURDS Monthly tucked under his arm. He had on a gray dinner jacket over a white shirt and black chinos. His dark hair was just long enough to begin to curl. I’ve told him a few times to let it grow. The curls looked good on him. But just as they started getting really good he’d go get a haircut. Curls were for girls, he’d say. Poppycock, I’d tell him back. Sylvia was in black leather and chains. She winked at me with her good eye, an expression she hadn’t been able to use in months because of her eye injury, and somehow the green glass eye twinkled. “In case we run into the Irish Mafia,” she said.
“The Irish Mafia is in Maryland,” said Badger, coming downstairs with his bag. He had left his eyeglasses in his room. His round face was solemn. “But we might find an irritable goat or two.”
“They probably have connections,” Sylvia argued back. “You know, homeland and all that.”
The twins both rolled their eyes. Billings saw it, too, and grinned at me, opening the closet door and handing out jackets. Nitro’s go bag was accompanied by a shoulder bag field kit. He hitched it up on his shoulder as he came out of his room. Billings opened the door, allowing the twins to go through first, gently touching one shoulder after another as the rest of the team followed them. Nitro took his jacket from Billings and went out the door and I ducked under Billings’ arm. He closed the door behind us all and locked it, and we all walked calmly to the Metro station, catching the next train to the airport.
While on the train, we all got simultaneous texts from Dinny, our plane steward that the CURDS1 would be docked at Gate 16. “Part of the upgrade,” explained Badger as we each acknowledged the text. “The APE is now version 2.6 and Dinny is officially in the loop.” APE stood for Automatic Pressure Equalizer, a device in the plane’s hardware that muffled the engine noise, eased turbulence compensations, and, as you might guess, equalized air pressure in the cabin of the plane to eliminate inner ear pain during take-offs and landings. Before this, she’d had no way of contacting us and Miss Chiff liaised between us. But sometimes the CURDS1, which has to work around commercial flights, can’t get a gate and we have to board from the tarmac. Having Dinny in the communications network was going to make things a lot easier.
We got the usual stares as we paraded through the concourse. With one person dressed for the Oscars and a set of conjoined twins, we rarely were able to travel without attracting attention. Also, the back of our jackets identified us as CURDS agents. As we walked, I caught bits of conversations.
“Did you get any?” A middle-aged woman asked someone near her in line at the check-in.
“No, it’s a bummer,” replied a goth teen. “I’m going to try to get my money back. What do they think I came here for?” As usual, the exchange stopped as we walked by and both participants watched us pass.
A young man with a scraggly beard whispered to someone who might have been his wife, “I heard there was a body in it.”
“I heard it was a mummified chicken. I think it was supposed to be good luck. I don’t know why they shut it down. I’ve heard about the things the FDA allows. What’s the big deal about a chicken?”
Later, near the security checkpoint, “I’m selling mine on eBay,” from a teenage girl traveling with a small group of friends. “The embossed container and the index card should work for authenticity, don’t you think?”
Another girl in the group patted her large purse. “I’m going to make earrings. I can keep a pair and sell them on Etsy. I should be able to get about twenty pair out of the chunk I got.” She saw us and everyone in the group looked up at us suspiciously. “It’s not illegal,” she said defensively.
We walked right on past, pulling out our badges to show the TSA agents. The agent at the scanner held up a hand to stop the next person in line and waved us through. We each tossed our bag on the conveyor belt, walked through the metal detector, and picked up our bag on the other end, proceeding to Gate 16 with barely a break in stride.
After showing our badges to the airline attendant at the door, we moved along the jetway and found Dinny waiting for us. “So it’s Ireland this time,” she said. “I’ve stocked up on potatoes.” Dinny Rosensglet, who sometimes served as our steward and sometimes as our co-pilot, provided meals on long flights, and getting to Ireland was going to take the better part of twelve hours. The plane door opened onto a locker room where each of us could store our personal items. There was also a larger locker that acted as our armory. Only Dinny had the key to it. Once we got to our destination, we would “suit up” for whatever eventuality we might run into. Nitro put his field kit in his locker and we stored our go bags. Billings brought his ereader and Roxy carried on her crochet bag. As we entered the body of the plane, where twenty seats were located in two columns, Dinny gave us our flight information. “Ireland is five hours ahead of D.C. Our flight time is expected to be eleven hours and thirty-four minutes. I’ll serve the meal about the half-way point. Local time when we arrive should be between 3 and 3:30 p.m. Local weather is expected to be 43 degrees Fahrenheit or about six degrees Celsius, cloudy, with a chance of rain at eighty percent. Cars from the Chembassy will meet us at the airport and take you to the market square of Cork. The Chembassador will help you arrange transport to Begorah Farms, which is deep in the hills west of the city of Cork.” As she spoke, we each chose our seats and strapped in for take-off. As always, I took a window seat. The second column of seats is in the middle of the plane, next to a wall that supports an upper deck. In the space below the deck is a bank of 4 bathrooms with showers.
“Thank you, Dinny,” I said. She and I glanced around, counting heads and making sure everyone was properly strapped in with their carryons secured under the seat. It might be a luxury plane, but take-off rules were no different. “Will you be coming with us? Don’t you shop at local markets while you are waiting?”
“Oh, there’s some plane maintenance that has to be done first. Don’t worry. I’ll get to the market later on. I’ll give Kevin the green light and get in my seat. See you in the air!” She turned with a bounce and disappeared.
Ten minutes later, we hit cruising altitude and we removed our seatbelts. Dinny came back out with the cats following her closely. They chased around each other for a bit, giddy to be out of their carriers. T.B., the most sedate, found my feet and lay down on top of them. He didn’t curl up to sleep, though, but stayed alert, as if he was on guard duty. My human, he seemed to tell the others with a look. Billings took out his ereader and settled in, his right ankle resting on his left knee providing support for the Kindle. I wondered what he was reading and thought perhaps I’d ask him later, when T.B. was finished guarding my feet.
Sylvia welcomed Harelip into her lap and slipped her a few cat treats from one pocket. “Sylvia,” I said, “you’re bribing her.”
Taking a seat right in front of me, Dinny beamed. “I’m official!” She pointed to her left arm. “I have an STD!”
Without looking up, Nitro said, “Penicillin.”
Dinny didn’t even laugh. “Is that going to be a regular thing now?”
“Probably.” Then he raised his head to look at her, a gentle smile on his face. “Congratulations.”
Suddenly, Dinny noticed Sylvia’s eyes and squealed. “Oh my God, Sylvia, you have two eyes!” I think Dinny wanted to hug her, but S
ylvia didn’t get out of her seat. Sylvia nodded, blushing double as Dinny took a seat near her and began to stare. “Oh, they are gorgeous! I wish I had green eyes.”
“Have you considered colored contacts?” suggested Nitro looking at her sideways. Sir Haughty, out of his seat and with his citizenship book in hand, tagged Nitro. With an apparent pre-arranged agreement, Nitro rose and went with Sir Haughty to the upper deck.
I asked, “Could we get back to the egregious violation of Sylvia bribing Harelip?” I said, teasing.
Sylvia delicately fed Harelip another treat. “You are free to bring cat treats on the plane, too. I mean, besides your feet.”
“Har.” At the moment, I couldn’t feel my feet. I reached down and gave T.B. a scratch behind his ears, letting him know he was doing a good job.
Having made his rounds once, Backwash latched onto Billings, climbing up and stepping directly on the Kindle screen. “Hey,” said Billings, “I’m reading that, you know.” With one hand, he grasped Backwash under his chest and lifted him off, setting him gently on the floor. “You turned like three pages, you big doofus.” He swiped back and forth until he found his place again. Rebuffed, the calico cat was not deterred. He moved on to Badger who was playing a game on his cell phone, the charging cord leading to the port in the armrest. Backwash stretched, reached up and latched his claws into Badger’s leg. I was expecting Badger to jump, but Badger calmly put his phone down and picked up the cat, allowing him to settle in his lap. But evidently, that wasn’t what Backwash wanted, since he immediately jumped off again. Badger shrugged and went back to his game.
That’s when Backwash noticed Roxy, behind me, who had opened up her crochet bag and was twirling around an enticing length of thick, salmon-colored yarn. I twisted, trapped by T.B. still on my feet. “What are you making now, Roxy?” I asked. She hadn’t been crocheting long and her first project had been an accidental merging of scarf and gloves which she called a glarf. She refused to admit she’d made a mistake and just kept going. I never did see the finished project, but she had, I think, three orders from civilians we’d met on a mission a couple of months ago.
She held up the length she’d been making, a long, seemingly unending string of bloque stitches. “I’m crocheting a length of yarn, then I’m going to ball it up and sew it in place.” She held up the small ball she had started to show me.
I took it for a closer look. My eyebrows reflexively twitched in an oddly uncomfortable way. “You’re crocheting a ball of yarn?”
“It’s called irony.” Grabbing the ball from my hand, she put the majority of the length back in the bag. “You relax your way, and I’ll relax my way. Hey!” She yelled as Backwash’s paw snapped out and snagged the string of stitches. She gently caught the paw and extracted the project from his claws, smoothing and tucking the slight shredding that resulted. “No, no.” And Backwash was rebuffed once again. He sat, continuing to watch the yarn for a new opportunity. “I love you, Backwash, but shoo already,” said Roxy, temporarily hiding all the yarn in the bag until Backwash lost interest. It didn’t take long. His attention span was about as long as a staple. The miniature kind for the Tot staplers.
“Oh, Sir Haughty, be serious!” Nitro suddenly yelled from above.
Gently urging T.B. off my feet, I rose to investigate and nearly fell over. I wobbled, my feet unresponsive. T.B. was no lightweight. He probably weighed in at close to twenty pounds. One foot at a time, I lifted them up and shook some feeling back into them before proceeding upstairs. “What’s the problem, Nitro?”
“You try,” he said, handing me the sample test booklet. “I’m just trying to help, like he asked me to, and he is just being deliberately annoying.”
Sir Haughty sat there, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Nitro,” I said, “I think you’ve been had. What did he do?”
Nitro gritted his teeth. “Ask him a question. I dare you.”
I stopped at a random page. “What is the term for a United States Senator?” I knew Sir Haughty knew the answer. Why was he studying when he had just assured me that the written test would not be a problem for him?
“Easy,” he said. “Wanker.”
“Are you calling me a wanker?” I’d heard the term before, but I wasn’t entirely clear on what it meant. I was pretty sure it was derogatory, though.
He and Nitro both answered. “That’s the term for a United States Senator.”
I groaned. Flipping to another page, I chose a new question. “Which state gave us the most presidents?”
“Confusion,” said Sir Haughty.
“Nitro’s right,” I told Sir Haughty. “You’re insufferable. I can’t believe I came all the way up here for this.” I tossed the book on the conference table. “Nitro, if you want to help him, take his biometrics. He’s been waiting impatiently for,” I pretended to look at my watch, “I don’t know. At least a few hours.”
When I got back downstairs, Billings was huddling with the twins next to the staircase. The twins were giggling. But I had my fill of social obligations. I went back to my seat, flipped the pillow to the front, and reclined. On a commercial flight you can’t really recline. You’re always annoying someone if you do. But on the CURDS1, the seats were spaced far enough apart to let us stretch. “Someone wake me for dinner,” I said, not really caring if anyone was listening. These people are nuts. I couldn’t wait to get to Ireland and talk to someone sane.
In D.C time, it was barely afternoon, so I didn’t really expect to fall asleep, but there’s something about the gentle bobbing of an airplane that kind of takes one back to their cradle days. Before I knew it, I was being shaken awake. “Dinner is served, Sleepy Head.” It was Dinny, and the nickname was said with affection. The rest were already upstairs, sitting around the conference table, eating. My stomach woke up only seconds after I did. The aroma coming down was making me salivate. “Shepherd’s pie,” she said, “or you can join Nitro in a bowl of colcannon.”
“Pie,” I said, pushing the chair into the sitting position before I rose. “Or possibly both.”
All three cats were patrolling for scraps as I took an open seat and dug in. People sometimes dropped something and it was investigated thoroughly, but usually snapped up by one or the other feline. Then there were small donations given as well. I really enjoy Dinny’s meals. She always tries to provide meals indigenous to our destination and it helps get us in the right frame of mind.
After our meal, pretty much everyone else felt sleepy and went down to get some shuteye. I grabbed a quick shower and sat down to read quietly. Dinny dimmed the cabin lights, adjusting the ambiance to the majority, and I read about Ireland on my cell phone under my personal overhead light. The cats took their cue from us, picked a human, and curled up. T.B. was back on my feet, this time off guard duty, but just as heavy. After a while, I heard someone stir and looked up. Reclining on an interior seat, Nitro had been wakened by Backwash climbing on him like furniture. Even in the dim light, I could see that Nitro’s eyes were open wide.
I put down my cell phone, leaving it plugged into the charging port, and went over to his seat, crouching down. “You all right, Nitro?”
“Backwash.”
“Yeah, he’s very rude.”
“No, look what he’s doing.”
I looked. He was sitting on Nitro’s pelvis, his front feet flexing repeatedly into Nitro’s abdomen. His claws snagged on the small blanket Nitro was covered with, thankfully not reaching through to the skin. “Helena, he’s never done this before.” He reached down, gently blocking Backwash’s paws, but the cat just reached around the obstacle and kept kneading, turning slowly until he presented his rear end and began kneading an area Nitro was not prepared to endanger. “He’s never done this before,” he repeated, quickly but gently grasping the cat and turning him around again. He didn’t want to interrupt the activity, but neither did he like the view.. “My fortune cookie, Helena. Remember?”
I’d long forgotten about the fortune cookies. �
��What?”
“Anyone who says it’s nice to be kneaded has never owned a cat,” he reminded me.
Chapter Five
“He what?” Sir Haughty refused to believe it.
Nitro insisted, “He kneaded my stomach for, like, twenty minutes! Has he ever done that to any of you?” We were in the locker room. The plane had landed, the cats were secured, and we were suiting up to begin an investigation in Ireland. Nitro had his field kit open and, even though he had inspected it a number of times already, pawed through the contents to make sure everything he wanted to take was there. He reached to the bottom of his locker and brought out a small bottle of liquid. “I better take some extra catalyst. This is serious cheese country.” He muttered to himself, but the acoustics in the locker room were on par with the Whisper Spot in Statuary Hall. We covered Europe. It’s all serious cheese country as far as I was concerned, but he may have been taking a relative view. As the biochemist, he was more familiar with the chemical needs of our various destinations.
The twins were strapping on their HEP belts, which hung at opposing angles like a gunfighter’s holster because of their connecting band. “He licked my nose for six or seven minutes once,” said Agnes.
I pulled my stun gun off the built-in charger and stuffed it into a pocket on the belt. “Backwash barely notices me, but T.B. occasionally chews my hair.” It wasn’t much of a contribution, but I didn’t want to be left out.
“It’s just a weird coincidence, don’t you think? I got a fortune cookie about kneading and then Backwash churns my stomach like he’s expecting butter to come out of my belly button.”
“Now there’s an image I can do without,” reflected Roxy, sliding her HEP belt into place around her flouncy skirt.
Badger made a noise like a leaking balloon. “Well, my fortune said the early worm gets eaten and I guarantee you I’m not having worms for breakfast, so I’m going with coincidence. Creep yourself out if you want.” He checked the charge on his stun gun and stowed it away.