Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel)

by Jessica Topper

  “Trust me, Karen. He’s what we called a poster boy in high school. Nice to look at, but once he opens his mouth . . . forget it,” Liz said, allowing her tongue to half loll out of her mouth and her eyes to glaze over for emphasis. She had the most amazing eyes, ever-changing in their color depending on her mood, like those cheap rings we all loved to wear in junior high. Today they were a glinting, mischievous green.

  “You weren’t even in the same grade as us!” Marissa pointed out. “Plus you were too busy following Tree’s brother, Kevin, around like a puppy dog to notice other guys.”

  Liz shrugged and smiled in dreamy defeat. She hadn’t been the only one: Kev had had a lot of conquests in high school, probably due to the fact he was the only cute boy who dared take home economics three years in a row. My brother could bake the pants off Betty Crocker . . . and he sweet-talked them off most any girl at Lauder High.

  “Anyway, one step at a time for this one.” Marissa patted my head like I was one of her Jack Russell terriers. “First the bed . . . then the accoutrement.” This made everyone giggle, since Marissa still possessed the thick accent she arrived with back in the third grade. Her family had moved upstate that year from Yonkers, which we all considered a very exotic, dangerous, and faraway place at the time.

  “So when are you going to find some bling-bling for me, Mariss?” Liz wanted to know. “I’ve been single since . . .” She drained her cup and licked the foam off the brim. “. . . before coffee cost $4.85 a cup.”

  “Not my jurisdiction, dear. Move back to the ’burbs and then we can talk about it.”

  Liz raised her eyebrows under her fiery red bangs. She was 100 percent Irish, yet her hair color was 100 percent Goldwell Red. She was one of those creamy-skinned, black-haired Irish girls, but had begun hitting the dye bottle in college. It suited her devilish personality, a trait we’d all come to know and love over the years.

  “It’s been fun, ladies. But I have to be on the eleven forty-five back to town. The Naked Bagel cannot run itself.” Liz’s bakery was a little piece of heaven with a hole in it. Yum. One of approximately fifteen things I keenly missed about weekends living in Manhattan. Buying the Sunday New York Times on Saturday evening was another. Brunches with all-you-can-drink mimosas, lounging in Sheep Meadow reading the Style section while Pete lay with his head on my lap working on the crossword puzzle . . . Okay, I will stop there for now.

  “Thanks for coming, I know it’s a hike for you.” I embraced Liz and got the ball rolling on the comprehensive, caffeinated hug exchange.

  We had started our Wednesday coffee ritual last year, when Abbey and Marissa’s youngest, Brina, began preschool. LakeShore Montessori encourages sending even the youngest children to school for a few hours every weekday, with the belief that they should experience the consistency of returning to the same environment. Lord knows Abbey needs some consistency in her days, other than my muttering to myself around the house and burning her breakfast waffles. And really, the “me” time had been great for all of us. Liz grumbled sometimes about schlepping, but we knew even she looked forward to shedding her tough city shell, if only for an hour of coffee and a short snooze on the Metro-North.

  “So . . .” Marissa began as we got into my Mini Cooper parked out back. “Figure out what you’re going to do for that children’s library program yet?”

  Our tiny town branch had an active Friends of the Library volunteer group. A far cry from the fast-paced research library I had managed in the city, but it had its moments. The group had fund-raised quite a bit of money with an auction last fall, and it had been allocated in many directions: collection development, new shelving, programming. I had come up with the bright idea of hosting a music program for children, which included busing in kids with autism from the local therapeutic day school in White Plains. My plan was to have a children’s musician come perform and give the kids a chance to try out some instruments.

  “Actually, yes. I believe I’ve had a Holy Grail moment.” I slapped a CD into Marissa’s hand and steered us out of the lot.

  “Holy . . . Is this that dude, the Kitty guy? Who Abbey loves?” She suspended the cracked jewel case between her polished talons for inspection. It contained no liner notes or cover art. But the disc itself was stamped SONGS FOR NATALIE—ADRIAN GRAVES, along with a disclaimer notice: FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY—NOT FOR SALE.

  “Pretty sure it’s the same guy.”

  Abbey’s all-time favorite PBS cartoon, Maxwell MacGillikitty, Feline Private Eye, was slightly insipid to anyone over age six, but had a wildly catchy theme song performed by the aforementioned Adrian Graves. Abbey was singing it from breakfast to bath time for months before it dawned on me to look into finding other works by the same musician. A surprisingly difficult endeavor, despite my superpowered librarian research skills. It was as if the man didn’t really exist. Or had a really crappy publicist. He just had no paper trail. Until now.

  “Where the hell did you find him?”

  “Well, I haven’t found him yet. But that came from the Bruised Apple.”

  The Bruised Apple bookstore was one of my favorite places on earth. Most librarians would probably run screaming from the place, as the thousands of used books and CDs that filled the store were arranged by categories in handwritten notes and taped-on labels. But I adored it. It reminded me of being a kid in my dad’s antique shop after school. I loved how the old bookshop floors creaked when you walked on them and how every available inch of wall space was covered with flyers from local artists and musicians.

  Marissa snorted. “I don’t know how you could find anything in that mess.”

  I had almost flipped past the disc in my haste, looking for something I so desperately wanted to exist but was not sure what shape or form the mirage would actually take. It turned out there was a whole case of them in the store’s back room. “From the warehouse of that CD manufacturing plant near Nyack,” the owner had informed me. “They bring us tons of music, mostly obscure stuff. Probably bands don’t pay their bills, or never pick the product up. Just put one of these out though, to see if it would sell. Never heard of him.”

  Marissa slid the CD into the car stereo. “Ah, ‘The Cat Came Back,’ good choice.”

  “Go to the next track.”

  “Oh my God, ‘Señor Don Gato’! Remember singing that song every year at summer camp? Meow, meow, meow.” She laughed.

  “You’ve got to hear this, he sings it so adorably!” I increased the volume and sang along. “There was not a sweeter kitty, meow, meow, meow, in the country or the city . . .”

  “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you have a crush on Señor Graves,” Marissa teased. When I didn’t respond in .02 seconds, she shrieked, “My God, you do!”

  “Come on, I don’t even know what he looks like—”

  “Smitten!”

  “—or anything about him.”

  “Smitten kitten.”

  “Very funny. Although I have to say, his voice is kinda sexy.” It had a gravelly undertone, different from the bulk of syrupy-sweet kids’ music out there. And there was an energy, like he really believed in the power and magic of music and wasn’t just out to collect a paycheck.

  “And I’d say there is something sexy about a man who can entertain your kid for hours. I’m telling you,” Marissa added, “even that purple dinosaur gets me—”

  “DON’T go there.”

  She laughed. “He’s really got a thing for cats, huh?”

  “Seems to be the theme of the album.” I didn’t tell her I bought the whole case. I couldn’t even tell myself why I did. “But now . . . to find the man behind the album.” The box had a shipping label bound for Burning Barn Studios, LLC. It was the only tangible clue I had.

  “I am confident you will find him. You are like a dog with a chew toy when it comes to that stuff. You won’t let it go.”

  “At the rate I’m going, we’ll probably end up with that clown Karen hired for Jasper’s birthday party last Oc
tober.”

  “The one that scared the crap out of the kids? God forbid!”

  “He blows a mean balloon animal.”

  Marissa chuckled, reaching into her pocket. “Want one?” She proffered up a dark chocolate–covered graham cracker from a cellophane pack of two.

  “Tell me you didn’t swipe those from Starbucks!” I exclaimed, pulling into her driveway.

  She shrugged unapologetically. “For old times’ sake.”

  We dissolved into giggles and had our quick chocolate fix.

  “Coming in?”

  “Nah, I am going to attempt to unpack some . . . stuff.”

  “No rush, you’ve only been back for, what? Three years?” She blew a kiss through the window at me to soften her wisecrack.

  Backing out, I pondered the fate of Don Gato and the cat that came back the very next day. And how much lighter you would take life if you knew you had nine of them.

  Jessica Topper is an ex-librarian turned rock ’n’ roll number cruncher. She is the author of the Much “I Do” About Nothing novels, including Courtship of the Cake and Dictatorship of the Dress, as well as the Love & Steel novels, including Deeper than Dreams and Louder than Love. Jessica lives in Western New York with her husband, daughter, and one ancient cat.

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