Bad Kitty
Page 2
“Totally Visa,” Alyson gum-cracked. Then like she was speaking to a five-year-old she said, “You know, it was everywhere we wanted to be.”
“I read a lot,” Veronique volunteered.
“Anything good?” I asked to be polite.
“Macramé for Dummies was pretty good,” Veronique said. “And Rabbits for Dummies. Those were probably the best ones.” She nodded to herself, then fixed me with a Hench gaze. “Is it true that you had to stick your finger in old people’s butts working in the doctor’s office? Alyson said you did, but I told her even you wouldn’t.”
Now that was touching. I said, “Why, Veronique, thank you for that kind-slash-unexpected show of support.”
This seemed to really confuse her and she looked at her Evil Hench Mistress for guidance. Alyson rolled her eyes, then said to me, “You’re not going to go all freaky and do anything embarrassing to ruin our vacation, are you?”
I pretended to think about that. “Would it really bug you?” I asked, then laughed girlishly. “Just kidding. Of course not.”
She sneered, said, “Good,” and I agreed, and at the time I said it, it was totally, completely true.
As well as for the approximately nine minutes that followed.
Two
I’d hoped that after this fascinating conversation, the Evil Hench Twins would wander off to pick up some lifeguards or small animals for one of their midnight sacrifices, but I was out of luck. Instead, they settled in on the lounges next to mine and got lost in an intellectual discourse over a copy of InStyle, which went:
“Cute.”
“Cute.”
“Cute.”
“Cute.”
“So cute.”
“Totally cute.”
“Cute.”
I think it might be a tonal language. Then all of a sudden Alyson said, “Cu—Oh, my god. Do you know who that is?”
And Veronique said, “Who?”
“Over there in the cabana,” Alyson said, pointing with the bill of her cap. “That’s Fiona Bristol.”
“No way. Wait—which one is Fiona Bristol again? Is she the one who wore that red dress to the Oscars?”
“Hello, SatCom to Veronique. Fiona Bristol is the model-slash-yogi-slash-former-kindergarten-teacher who was discovered on a playground in Los Angeles by that famous photographer, who she married. Remember? And there was that big scandal last year because—”
And then, just like her Evil Hench Self, she started whispering. Which was so unfair because I’d had to listen to all that other stuff and now when they were finally saying something that could at least be interesting, I couldn’t hear.
To make it clear to them that I didn’t care what they were saying, I picked up my Meaningful Reflection Journal and tried to meaningfully reflect. This what I came up with:
Who shouts what is dull
But whispers what might delight?
Evil Hench Twins do!
(P.S. Veronique:
Please lean back in your lounge chair;
you’re blocking my sun.)
A double haiku! That, I decided, was more than enough Meaningful Reflection for one day, so I put down the journal and moved on to intently studying my copy of Modern Drummer magazine in preparation for my career as a drummer in a kick-ass angry girl band. My eye kept being drawn to the cute guy at the Snack Hut, though, who was still sitting there in all his splendor. He looked like he might be tall, too. He was definitely Visa.
I decided to try some secret mind control on him and implant a message into the core of his being. The message I settled on was: “You’re growing very, very warm. You wish you were not wearing your shirt. Stand up to your full height and take it off.”
In case you’re wondering, the way you use mind control to stare into the core of someone’s being is like this:
Apply lip gloss.
Apply sunglasses.
Stare.
Stare really, really hard (but without furrowing your brow because this could cause wrinkling and can make you look, according to Polly, like the Incredible Hulk taking a poo).
Mind control is another superpower I don’t have, so I was really surprised when, all of a sudden, it seemed to be working. The cute guy was looking in my direction! Our eyes—through our sunglasses—locked! He started to stand up!
I should have been suspicious. Seriously, why would anyone pay attention to an “exotic-looking” girl with no boobs when there were plenty of buxom supermodels scattered around the pool?
Good question! If you find yourself in that situation, here is the answer:
They would pay attention if an enormous orange cat with only three legs were leaping through the air onto the girl’s (boobless) chest, baring its claws. Believe me. Because that is exactly what happened, and let me tell you, I suddenly got a lot of attention.
Then I got a lot more when I shouted a really bad word at the top of my lungs. Because attached to the cat was a silver metal leash, and silver metal leashes get really hot in the desert sun, especially when they whip around your leg. Try it sometime. They get so hot that you don’t even notice that a cat is sticking its claws into your chest. Or even stop to wonder what a cat is doing at the Venetian pool. And why it’s on a leash.
Once the mists of pain cleared from my mind, though, I am sure I would have thought of all those things. Only I didn’t get a chance because when I tried to lift the cat off of myself, he dug in with his claws, causing pain to shoot through my body like I was being stung by a thousand million bees. Which I took as a subtle message from the cat that he wasn’t going anywhere, at least without a large amount of my skin under his claws. I must have been light-headed from the pain because all I could think was that if this were a murder case, and the cat were the killer, boy would that skin under its nails be incriminating evidence. I was about to warn the cat about that when a huge shadow fell over all of us, and the cat went very still, but dug in harder.
“I take the animal now,” the shadow told me, only he said “de” instead of “the” in that kind of accent Arnold Schwarzenegger has made so popular. And really, if you’d been trying to cast a comic book villain named the Fabio-inator (which, okay, why would you be, but still) you could not have done better. He was about eighteen feet tall and had long dark hair and a fake tan and a square jaw and biceps that bulged out in forty-three different directions. Which were visible because all he was wearing were small, tight, black swimming trunks. And a gun.
I’ll have to ask Polly, but I’m pretty sure that’s a fashion don’t.
Anyway, since the cat seemed to be adhering himself to me with super strength, I said, “He’s holding on pretty tight. Maybe if I just pet him for a moment he will calm down.” Which I thought was both polite and very wise.
The Fabinator just glared at me and said, “Now. I take pussy from you now.”
I swear.
And not only did he say that, he said it loud, and as he talked, out of the corner of my eye I saw the cute guy taking off in the opposite direction, fast. This allowed me to collect Little Life Lessons 2 and 3:
Little Life Lesson 2: A good way to ensure you will never have a boyfriend is to have a large armed man with an uncertain grasp of English heckle you in public.
Little Life Lesson 3: If for some reason the guy might still be interested, following up by having your father rush over right afterward screaming, “Jasmine, you know you are not allowed to talk to strangers!” as though you were six will nip it in the bud. Oh, and it helps if your father is wearing a safari suit. With shorts. And knee socks. Because this is his idea of what you wear in the desert.
Now you know why I want to be in an angry girl band.
Anyway, on the one hand there’s the Fabinator with his gun and his Speedo. On the other, there’s Crocodile Dundee threatening to send me to my room and wash my mouth out with soap. And on the third hand, or rather paw, there is the cat trying to burrow under my skin. I guess I was pretty close to losing it then so, when o
ut of nowhere a strawberry-blond little boy with tears streaming down his face came running toward me yelling, “Don’t let them have my kitty! They’re going to hurt him! Run!,” I did.
Little Life Lesson 4: Do NOT take orders from an eight-year-old.
Where I ran, with the cat still adhered to my chest, was toward the part of the pool that was less crowded. I ducked under a velvet rope and headed behind this sort of pavilion thing, where I discovered another smaller pool. And a wedding.
Or the beginning of the wedding. Because as I came around the corner, the bride was walking down the red carpet on her dad’s arm, and everyone was standing and the band was playing, “Here Comes the Bride.” I stopped running and started backing up, which is not that easy in flip-flops, but I couldn’t stop looking at the bride, because she looked so happy. And so did her dad.
Then I made myself turn and I was almost around the edge of the pavilion when I felt myself get jolted back and I heard a kind of clanging, then a kind of screeching, and I realized that the cat’s leash had gotten caught on a chair and was dragging behind us. And before I could try to get it off, the chair snaked around and got stuck on the edge of a table.
A table with a cake on it. Or actually five cakes, because it was a five-tiered wedding cake. With real flowers. And I bet it was expensive because when the bride saw the table going over and the cake starting to slide, she pulled away from her dad and leaped to save it.
Which is why they both hit the pool at the same time.
The groom just stood there staring. He didn’t make a single move to save either the cake or the bride. Personally, I would not marry someone who stared at me as I floated in the pool in my wedding dress rather than jumped in the pool after me and pretended the whole thing was some great joke and we meant to do that so the guests would think it was funny. But that is only because the chances of me falling into a pool are very high and I have to protect against that. Although the chances of me ever finding anyone who could put up with me long enough to want to marry me are, as my father points out whenever I practice the drums while he is at home, very low, so maybe it doesn’t matter. But anyway, here was the situation:
Bride: wet
Cake: demolished
Groom: stunned
Cat:
Ah, yes, that’s an excellent question. “Where was the cat in all this?” you may well ask. And the answer SHOULD have been, at my side, faithful witness to all he had wrought. But no. As soon as the mayhem started, the cat jumped off of me and padded off into the bushes. So that when Security came up and started screaming at me, and I said, “It wasn’t me, it was the cat’s leash,” they could stare at me and go, “What cat?” And mean it.
You see what I mean about being attractive to cats being kind of a sucky superpower.
That is when I discovered that the only thing more embarrassing than having a cute guy nearby while a large man and your father yell at you is being escorted away from a pool by two red-coated security men while wearing nothing but a bikini. Five million people, or however many were at the pool, all stopped to stare at me. And all probably saw the place behind my knee that I missed shaving. Plus, I am sure my nipples were showing through my top. My one consolation was that the cute guy was not there to witness my walk of shame.
My other consolation was that, instead of walking through the casino, the security men led me to this secret doorway that went into some bat-cave part of the hotel. Only when it slammed behind us did I begin to wonder what the laws were in Nevada. My father had been going on and on during the flight to Vegas about how Nevada still seemed like part of the Wild West, which did not give me a warm, relaxed feeling. Like, I was pretty sure running by the pool was against the rules, but by Wild West standards, was it the kind of thing that required execution? What if they were taking me to some special, secret electric chair? Would it work better because my bathing suit was still a little wet from water aerobics? What if this was the underground lair of a super bad guy? Who wanted to use my cat powers to spread evil in the world?
One of the guards pushed me through the door toward this hard-looking metal chair that was standing next to a hard-looking metal table. I said, “What is going to happen now?” and I admit it, I stuttered. Because I was scared.
“What is going to happen now, miss,” he said, wagging a stubby square finger at me, “is that you are going to get in a lot of trouble.”
Then he closed the door. And locked it. Giving me a chance to add Little Life Lesson 5: When you go to prison, try not to be wearing a bikini. (Especially a damp one.)
Three
The main difference between where I was and real prison, as far as I could tell, based on what I’d learned as a faithful viewer of Court TV, was that they let me keep my watch and they didn’t give me an orange jumpsuit. Which meant that by using the second hand to time my pulse, I could come up with a really good record of the rate at which I was freezing to death sitting there in my bikini. I calculated that if it kept up at the same pace, I would die in forty minutes.
Then the air conditioner came on. This was so not Visa.
It was probably all for the best, since even if I did make it out alive, my father would kill me. It’s one thing to occasionally find yourself in the middle of other people’s difficulties like I sometimes do (but never on purpose. And, in case it comes up, I really was not responsible for the altercation-slash-riot in the food court at the mall that time. I even got the GOLDEN CHOPSTICK CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION ENTITLING THE BEARER TO ONE FREE EGG ROLL EVERY MONTH for my help. Plus, it was two years ago), but that’s nothing compared to destroying a wedding. That is someone’s cherished memory! And weddings are expensive. Who knew what a place like the Venetian charged for a five-tiered cake?
There were other questions too, like: Would they give me an installment plan to pay it off? Or would my father just cut up my body and sell the different pieces for scientific research? Could you get a lot of money for that?
My only hope was that my father would somehow have had one of his epiphanies. He’s a professor of anthropology and a genius—a certified one; he was given one of those Macarthur genius grants and everything. I don’t know about all geniuses, but when my dad gets an idea, he becomes totally absorbed in it and forgets about real life around him. (Which is another reason it’s so great to have Sherri!. When I was twelve, my dad decided to do a book on ritual worship, so we spent a year traveling around Europe looking for all the pieces of St. Catherine’s body. Which was cool, but my dad completely forgot that I might have to go to school. I had a lot of making up to do when we got back. Sherri! would totally not let that happen.) Maybe, if something had triggered an especially super idea, my dad would be too distracted to notice what had happened. If he could forget about a whole year of school, certainly he could miss one little decimated wedding—
The door slamming open to reveal my father pretty much crushed those bold girlish dreams. I wish I could say that he strolled or sauntered or skipped into my cell, but I’m pretty sure the right word here is stalked. Or maybe marched.
If I thought things were grim before, I was wrong. You haven’t seen grim until you’ve seen a six-foot-six sunburned man dressed like a British tourist in India at the turn of the last century stalk-march toward you, stop, and say, “Do you know what you have done this time, Jasmine?”
I took the “this time” to be a bad sign, suggesting he was not only aware of what had just happened, but was also, in fact, remembering that time in the food court. Or the other time at the circus. Or—
I swallowed hard. “I saved a cat’s life.”
“Bah,” he said. “That cat was in no danger.”
“Really?” I asked. This was good news. “Then why did the little boy say—”
“Be quiet!”
Yes, he was definitely remembering the food court.
“The hotel has asked us to leave,” he said, leaning over me. “You, Sherri!, and I. As well as your uncle and his family.”
“Why must you always surround yourself with mayhem, Jasmine? Why can’t you just interact in a normal manner with others?”
I braced for the “like your cousin, Alyson,” that usually came after statements like that, but fortunately he didn’t say it. Or maybe unfortunately. Because he didn’t say anything, just gave a long sigh and stared at me with this sad look on his face that told me I’d let him down again. He ran his hand through his hair and said, “Do you have any idea what it is like to watch your only daughter be escorted away by Security?” His voice was soft and kind of sad.
I decided it wasn’t the right time to point out that, whatever else I’d done, teen pregnancy wasn’t on the list, and I didn’t have a daughter. I said, “I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t know why these things always happen to me.”
“Happen to you?” he exploded, suggesting maybe I should have mentioned the absence-of-a-teen-pregnancy thing. “Blast all, they don’t just happen to you. How can running into a wedding just happen?” He hit the table in front of me, making me and it jump. “No, Jasmine, you’ve got to stop pretending to be a passive participant in all this. You are not a child anymore and have got to start taking responsibility. How can you be trusted to drive a car if you can’t be trusted to not ruin a wedding?” This is the kind of logic that makes sense to geniuses. “As of today,” he said ominously, “be prepared to pay the price for your actions.”