How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  “You’re just in time then,” I said to the long back of Monty, who had turned to straighten his neatly pressed suit and tie in the reflection of the storefront glass. “The contractor’s going to meet me here this afternoon—to take a walk through and get an idea of what we’re up against.”

  Monty tore himself away from his reflection, clapping his hands together hungrily. “Excellent! What’s this fellow’s name? I might know him.”

  Despite Monty’s efforts, an independent-minded curl near the top of his head flipped out of position and curly-cued straight up in the air.

  “Um, hold on a second. I can’t remember it off the top of my head.” I grabbed my shoulder bag and unzipped the pouch where I’d stashed the business card. “Miranda Richards recommended him—she was Oscar’s attorney.”

  “Oh, I know Miranda,” Monty said, bobbing his head up and down to emphasize his familiarity. He leaned against the cash register counter and tilted up one of his long, wingtipped feet so that the flat, handsewn sole flashed in the afternoon sunlight.

  “I’ve got his business card right here,” I said, digging in the shoulder bag.

  A shadow darkened the front door as my fingers found the card and fished it out. Monty turned to greet the entrant as I began to read the card. “His name is . . .”

  “Harold Wombler,” Monty gasped as if he’d been punched in the gut.

  I looked up. Monty was staring at the front door, his back stiffened, every hair bristled. Even the renegade curl springing off the top of his head seemed to register offense.

  He swiveled around towards me, a look of abject horror on his face. “Noooo,” he whispered hoarsely as the door swung open behind him. “Wombler?”

  The shadow entered the Green Vase and stood behind Monty, blocking my view. There was an awkward silence broken only by the barely perceptible thud of Isabella’s nimble feet hitting the floor in front of the bookcase. A moment later, I saw her silently circling the group, carefully studying the visitor.

  Harold Wombler cleared his throat, this time channeling a clogged up carburetor. A pale look of dread iced down Monty’s face. I sprung forward and vaulted around the frozen Monty to greet the contractor.

  “Hello, you must be Mr. Wombler,” I said, holding out my hand to the man standing in the doorway.

  Harold Wombler nodded, pressing his crinkly, cracked lips firmly together.

  He was a middle-aged, smaller-framed man wearing a pair of oversized overalls that looked like they’d been shredded through a lawn mower. I tried not to look too closely at the gaping holes, desperately afraid of what he might, or might not, be wearing underneath. A dingy, frayed baseball cap with an illegible message on the front covered most of his course, greasy black hair. Bushy tufts protruded from each nostril.

  Monty had turned to face Harold and was now standing behind me; I could hear his teeth grinding in my right ear.

  Harold finally met my extended hand and weakly engaged me in one of the most disconcerting handshakes I have ever experienced.

  Harold’s skin hung loosely over his entire body, as if he had recently lost a vast amount of weight. Big, hollow jowls of dermis hung from his sunken cheeks. He looked like a chipmunk that had been flattened by a steamroller and only partially re-inflated. The skin on Harold’s hands was just as flaccid. It rolled beneath my fingers as I tried to grip his hand.

  Harold nodded in Monty’s direction. “Carmichael.”

  “Wombler,” Monty croaked, disbelievingly.

  I stepped back as the two glared at each other. Monty’s fingers fidgeted with his bow and arrow (“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”) cufflinks as if he might pluck them out of his sleeves and chuck them at Harold. For his part, Harold had placed one of his wrinkled hands on a hammer attached to a tool belt slung loosely across his narrow hips. He palmed it like a pistol as his shiny, black eyes stared seethingly at Monty.

  Rupert wandered into the room and took a seat on the floor next to my feet, rotating slightly on his round rump as he looked back and forth between Harold and Monty. I tried to break the tense silence.

  “Why don’t we . . . ,” I started nervously, but I was drowned out by a loud, snorkeling noise emanating from Harold’s nose. Rupert slid backwards on the wood floor, looking up warily at the brushy underside of Harold’s dripping orifice.

  I tried again. “Why don’t we go outside and start with the front of the store? That’s the area that needs the most work.”

  Rupert was the first to move at my suggestion, bouncing nonchalantly towards the entrance. I plucked him up and secured him on the cashier counter while Monty and a still sniffling Harold filed past me out the front door.

  I turned my back to the door and looked up at the ceiling, trying to summon the emotional fortitude for what promised to be a confrontational meeting.

  That’s when the bickering began.

  “What are you up to Monkey-mery?” Harold growled under his breath.

  “Don’t call me that!” Monty squeaked back. “I’m not up to anything. I’m just being helpful,” he said defensively.

  The two combative voices permeated easily through the broken glass of the door. I fiddled absentmindedly with Rupert’s ears, listening to the harshly whispered words. He glared up at me, irritated, but my mind was focused on the conversation outside.

  “Didn’t you learn anything from your overnight adventure at the courthouse?” Harold’s deep, baritone voice menaced through the glass.

  “Look here, you know that was all a big misunderstanding,” Monty sputtered, his voice rising out of its whisper. “I still can’t believe you had me arrested!”

  “I believe that’s the proper protocol when you find someone’s broken into a private residence,” Harold growled.

  “Do you have any idea what I went through that night?” Monty’s indignant tones were now echoing through the showroom.

  “A holding cell with twenty-four other miscreants from the streets of San Francisco? Yeah, I can imagine.” Harold’s quieter, more controlled voice chuckled. “I bet you fit right in.”

  Growing annoyed with my fumbling fingers, Rupert reached up and swatted at my hand. A stray claw caught my index finger, drawing a pinprick of blood.

  “Always snooping around, meddling in other people’s business.”

  I stepped back, scowling at Rupert, sucking on my wounded finger. My heel brushed against the door as Monty’s voice took a hard, suspicious turn.

  “You know,” he paused, venom dripping from every word, “you sound just like . . .”

  The pressure from my heel caused the door to creak open, interrupting Monty’s sentence. A glowering silence swallowed me as I slowly turned around.

  Chapter 6

  “YOU GOING TO join us?”

  Harold’s grinding voice abraded even the hard surface of the concrete beneath his feet. The shafts of hair on the back of my neck cringed as if they’d been roughed with a piece of sandpaper.

  I tried to conjure a convincingly blank expression—desperate to disguise the fact that I had been hanging on every not-so-hushed word of their bitter conversation—and joined Harold and Monty outside on the sidewalk.

  “Sorry about that,” I said, forcing normalcy into my voice. “I was just . . . ” Distracted by the conversation I’d overheard, I thought to myself. I pointed at the window through to the counter where Rupert was inspecting his feet, grooming the feathery white hairs that poked out between his toes.

  “Rupert had something in his fur,” I explained lamely.

  On the other side of the glass, Rupert looked up and belched obligingly.

  “Hmmph.” Harold stared at me with his beady, black eyes.

  A light wind traipsed past us, picking up the stale scent of his breath and zesting my sensitive nasal cavity with its rank odor.

  “So, what’s the plan?” he demanded more than asked. “What are you going to do with this place?”

  I had lost many hours of sleep the previous evening askin
g myself exactly that question. It was so unlike me to jump into something without thoroughly analyzing all of the angles, and I had begun to second-guess my decision. A growing seed of self-doubt was worming its way through my intestines like a parasite.

  “Well,” I said, feeling my throat closing up even as I began the presentation I’d rehearsed in my head earlier that day. “I’m still thinking about exactly what kind of business would be best for this location. I thought I might do some market studies, lay out a couple of business plans, and run the spread sheets for comparison.”

  Harold’s dark, scratchy eyebrows knitted together as I spoke, increasing the paralyzing tension creeping up my spine.

  “The storefront here is a bit of an eyesore, and it’s visible from up and down the street.” I tried not to look at Harold’s increasingly sour expression. “Maybe if we could discuss some of the options and costs to fix up the bricks and front glasswork . . . then I could run the figures.” I gulped, feeling awkward and completely unnerved.

  “It’s an antiques shop,” Harold said dourly. “Why not just keep it as an antiques shop?”

  I was starting to feel a little faint. A second, fractious interaction in as many days was more than my feeble, conflict-avoiding constitution could take.

  I glanced back into the window. Unconcerned with my predicament, Rupert had rolled over onto his back so that the warm sun cooked his belly. An indolent paw partially covered one eye.

  “Most of the other stores up and down the street are antiques shops,” Harold said, agitatedly waving a wrinkled hand. I could tell he felt that we were wasting his time.

  “Yes, precisely,” I said, regretting my rash dismissal of Miranda’s advice to sell the Green Vase. “So that’s why I want to investigate some alternatives. . . .” My voice faded softer and softer.

  A hissing sfit of air whistled out through the gap between Harold’s front teeth like a deflating balloon. He turned away from me and started pacing disgustedly up and down the sidewalk.

  My stomach flip-flopped as the blood drained away from my pounding forehead. I leaned against the wall behind me for support, clutching one of the exposed bricks.

  It crumbled off in my hand.

  Monty had been avidly watching this exchange and now swooped into the void. “You’re an accountant aren’t you?” he asked, the enthusiasm of a new idea infusing him. “Why don’t you set up your own accounting business? There are a couple of small offices around the corner from here—people who’ve left big firms to go out on their own.”

  Harold’s eyes hammered nails into Monty’s skull.

  “Hmm,” I said thoughtfully, relieved for the momentary deflection of Harold’s ire. “I hadn’t really thought about that.” Numbers began running through my head as I analyzed the prospect. “That’s a possibility.”

  My equivocal assessment provided far too much encouragement. Once he’d strapped himself into the driver’s seat of an idea, Monty had a precipitous tendency to steer it right over the edge.

  “Of course, you’ve got all of this inventory, so you might as well continue the antiques shop on the side as well.” He placed a long finger against his temple. “You might get some crossover business that way.”

  Monty crouched over, as if he were taking a seat in an imaginary chair. “Doop tee doo, I’m waiting to meet with my accountant to discuss my tax return.” He tilted his head back and forth, arms folded together patiently. The long neck angled, as if he were looking around a corner. “There’s quite a line of people in front of me.” The neck snapped back around. “Hello, what’s this? A nifty antique! Something I need, I’m sure.”

  He stood up with a flourishing gesture. “They’ll have spent their entire refund before they even leave your office.”

  I shook my head negatively throughout this entire routine, but Monty turned a blind eye, continuing on.

  “You’ll keep the shop name the same though, I imagine. Unless . . .” Monty licked his index finger and raised it, as if checking the direction of the wind. “How about ‘The Green Lampshade?’ ”

  I shook my head faster, in definite rejection.

  He sighed, momentarily disappointed. “Right then.” Monty hooked a finger around Harold’s elbow. “Here’s what I’m thinking . . .”

  Harold looked at Monty as if he was about to throw him through the nearest window.

  “The bricks and windows should all be replaced, of course,” Monty said, motioning airily with his free hand. “And, we’ll need a graphic icon that matches up with store’s name.”

  He looked back at me over his shoulder. “The Green Vase,” he intoned pompously.

  Monty returned his attention to Harold, whose sour expression increasingly resembled an angry walnut.

  “I see a vase with a long, slender neck. Elegant, in its simplicity, if you know what I mean.” Monty arched his eyebrows dramatically. “Made out of a translucent material that will glow when the light hits it just right.” He nodded his head up and down. “Yes. Yes, yes.”

  Monty released Harold and began prancing along the sidewalk.

  “Now, we should throw out these wide windows.” Monty threw his right hand up and over his shoulder, as if tossing a crumpled piece of paper. “Replace them with smaller glass pieces—say, one-foot squares—that you lay out in a crisscrossed metal frame.” Monty’s long legs carried him along the front of the store, the building playing the role of an immobile dance partner as he glided around it. “You see, running the length of the store.”

  “Then,” Monty continued, nearly breathless from his exertions, “the pièce de résistance—we have a couple of the squares inlaid with the green vase icon. I know an artisan here locally who would do it for a reasonable price.” He collapsed against the wall, panting as he looked up at us expectantly.

  Harold grunted noncommittally, jamming his thumbs into the shoulder straps of his overalls. He wandered back and forth in front of the store, poking and prodding the building as if it were a used car.

  I avoided eye contact with Monty, afraid of unintentionally giving him any further encouragement.

  I peeked through the glass to check on Rupert. He had flopped over onto his side, dangerously close to the edge of the counter. The side of his chest rose slowly up and down, a metronome ticking in time to a deep, slumbering waltz.

  Harold opened the broken front door and looked up at the framing, his eyes narrowing as they assessed the weaknesses in the structure. Then, having completed his inspection, he let the door go. It slammed shut with a loud, clapping sound that echoed against the sidewalk.

  Rupert levitated about two inches off of the counter. There was a startled look in his eyes as his head jerked up; then he disappeared from view. I winced as I heard him thump heavily onto the floor. Lifting myself up on my tiptoes, I leaned into the glass, looking at the ground where he’d fallen.

  Apparently, nothing was hurt other than his pride. Rupert’s disgruntled back end stalked towards the stairs at the back of the store, the tip of his long, feathery tail kinked to express his displeasure.

  Harold’s guttural grunt drew my attention back to the sidewalk. “Whole place ought to be condemned,” he said, “but I don’t guess the board would let you get away with that.”

  Monty began fidgeting with his cufflinks, the pale skin on his cheeks and forehead pinkening from exposure to both the direct sun and the irascible Harold.

  “You going to be around here tomorrow afternoon?” Harold asked gruffly. “Sunday?” he added, as if I might not be aware of the calendar’s order of the days.

  “Sure—I mean, I can be,” I responded.

  Monty’s head popped up hopefully.

  “You’ve got a lot of work to do to get this idea of yours dressed up into a proposal for the board,” Harold said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t have time in my schedule for all that, but I can send over my assistant, Ivan.”

  “Great,” I said, “How about two . . .”

  “Ivan? Ivan B
atrachos?” Monty broke in with feverish excitement.

  Harold threw Monty a withering glance.

  “He’s one of the best craftsman in the city,” Monty enthused, tapping me on the elbow authoritatively. “He’s worked on almost all of the renovations in Jackson Square.”

  Harold sighed heavily, this time the air limply expelling from the loose, flapping skin of his cheeks.

  “The Ivan Batrachos! Imagine that.” Monty put one hand up against the wall, the other on the angular hip protruding through his unbuttoned suit jacket. He tipped up the toe of his shoe, crossing one stork-like leg over the other.

  “Ivan Batrachos,” Harold said, pursing his lips together and spitting on the sidewalk. “My assistant.” He turned and limped off down the street, calling out crankily behind him, “Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

  I stared at Monty, rubbing the side of my head, looking forward to Monday morning and the four, peaceful corners of my quiet cubicle.

  Chapter 7

  TAP, TAP, TAP. Persistent knuckles rapped on the iron framing of the door to the Green Vase.

  It was Sunday afternoon. I’d seen the tapper traipsing across the street from his art studio, but pretended not to hear him as I bent down into the waist-high pile in front of me, searching for a flash of the metal piece Isabella had stolen the day before. She had stuck her head into one of the open cardboard boxes in the middle of the showroom when we’d arrived—a suspiciously furtive look on her face—but I’d rummaged through it to the bottom without success.

  I looked up, reluctantly, as Monty wrapped an arm around the edge of the open door and swung himself into the room, pivoting on his planted feet like hinges.

  “You’re very welcome,” he said, tipping his head to doff an imaginary top hat that he caught with his free hand and swept grandly across the floor.

  “Thanks,” I said warily, worriedly wondering what blessing had just been bestowed upon me.

  “You’re like a little bird,” he said, fluttering his eyelashes, “that I’ve taken under my wing.”