How to Wash a Cat

by Rebecca M. Hale

  I was too distracted by the door to notice my companions’ reactions—too distracted to notice their greedy-eyed gleam when the key slid into the lock and engaged.

  BEEP.

  It was Monday morning, and I was returning to work after the previous week’s absence. I had just reached the foyer to the accounting firm’s office tower. Gaudy stone gargoyles glared down at me from the upper rim of the entrance’s atrium.

  Half asleep, I didn’t hear the tiny error sound as I swiped my security access card, and I walked straight into the frozen entry bar. Rubbing my bruised abdomen, I smiled apologetically at the suited man in line behind me and waved the card again in front of the scanner.

  Beep.

  This time I heard the beep and didn’t try to charge through the gate. I turned around to fend off the impatient man who was now slapping his plastic card against the metal railing.

  “My card doesn’t seem to be working.” I shrugged. “I’ll just try it one more time.”

  I held my breath as I took one more swipe.

  Beep.

  A loud, irritated sigh erupted from behind my left shoulder. Gritting my teeth, I turned and said stiffly, “Be my guest.”

  The man moved aggressively past me, flicking his card in the general direction of the scanner. A slight clicking sound echoed in the stone foyer indicating his card had been accepted. The bar swung easily away from him as he moved through the entrance and turned the corner to the bank of elevators.

  I moved off to the side of the foyer, underneath the gaping mouth of one of the elevated gargoyles, and studied my card. It didn’t seem bent or disfigured in any way. I was holding it up to the pale, anemic light from the ceiling fixture when a security guard touched my elbow.

  I handed him my card and said helplessly, “It doesn’t seem to be working.”

  He read the name on my badge and said in a hushed tone, “Follow me, please.”

  He was a solid, bulging man with a gut that looked as if it had stored up reserves for a long hibernation. His thick, trunk-like legs seemed to have taken root during his endless hours of standing surveillance. Each plodding step required enormous effort.

  The dark, pitted bark of his skin was expressionless as he unchained a side gate and led me down the hall to the elevators. We disembarked at the fifth floor lobby and waited, both of our roots descending into the polished marble tile.

  The security guard didn’t volunteer any information, but a worrying knot was forming in my stomach. About half an hour later the human resources manager emerged from a hallway and bustled over to us.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said, as if she’d been waiting on us and not the other way around.

  Unlike the security guard, she swished sharply from place to place, never lingering for long in any one position. The words of my firing flew out of her mouth the second her plump posterior dropped into the seat behind her desk.

  “But—why?” I asked, although I had already guessed the reason. I had worked at the firm for five years; only a short list of provocations were handled in this manner.

  “We understand,” she said, her face gelling into a solemn mold that I was sure had been used countless times before, “that you will be branching out on your own, as a solo practitioner.”

  She paused, the traces of a smirk creasing her lips. “As you know, you are prohibited from soliciting any of the firm’s existing clients while you are employed here. We wouldn’t want you to be unduly tempted, so we think this arrangement will be best for both parties.”

  Monty, I steamed internally, had broadcast his hare-brained accounting-antiques store idea to all of the Jackson Square board members. Someone from the board must have passed the information on to the accounting firm. The business circles in San Francisco, I knew, ran a tight circumference.

  I nodded, red faced, aware that there was no use arguing or trying to explain. Once this kind of decision had been reached, the firm never budged. The security guard led me to my cubicle and supervised as I packed up my personal belongings.

  Silently, I unpinned the smattering of photos from the cloth-covered walls of my cubicle and cushioned my coffee cup in a corner of the single cardboard box I’d been allotted. Deafening stares bored into my back as I exited the electronic beehive of computers, headsets, and photocopier machines.

  On the street outside the fortress of the firm’s office building, I blinked for several seconds, dazed in the unaccustomed freedom of a mid-morning Monday unleashed in downtown San Francisco.

  “Well, Oscar,” I said, still in shock as I stared up past the office buildings at the powder blue sky. “I hope you’re happy.”

  I carried my box the couple of blocks over to Jackson Square. I was standing beside the cashier counter just inside the Green Vase, one hand on my forehead, the other on my hip, when a short, rapping sound echoed against the glass behind me.

  “Hello there, neighbor,” Monty called out from the sidewalk.

  I waved weakly at him, hoping he might go away if I didn’t move to open the door. Ivan had installed Oscar’s replacement before he left the night before.

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” he shouted persistently through the glass.

  I sighed depletedly and unlocked the door to let him in.

  “I was canned,” I said flatly. “This morning.”

  “Oh—well.” Monty’s face contorted. He seemed to be looking for the right thing to say. “That’s fabulous!”

  I packaged my most withering look and sent it to him express.

  “No, I mean, obviously, the actual event must have been unpleasant.” Monty patted me on the shoulder awkwardly. “But, won’t it be easier to get started on your new business without having to keep up your other job?”

  “I suppose,” I murmured, an underlying sharpness in my voice. I had intended to think over my decision on the Green Vase for a couple of weeks before giving up my regular paycheck.

  A light flashed in Monty’s eyes. “I know just the thing that will cheer you up,” he said. “I was going to bring it over later anyway. You wait here.” He leapt giddily out the door and sprinted across the street to his art studio.

  I sat down wearily on the stool behind the cashier counter and considered my situation. Thankfully, the funds from Oscar’s estate would be available once probate was completed. I had some savings of my own that would keep me afloat until then, and I could save on rent by moving out of my apartment and into Oscar’s old flat upstairs. My eyes rolled up to the ceiling, thinking about the enormous cleaning job awaiting me.

  Monty reappeared, holding a vase filled with fresh, violet-colored tulips. The vase was the epitome of the icon we were planning to use for the inlay to the glass windows. The translucent, green surface of the vase glowed as the light shone through it.

  “You’re right,” I said, somewhat sarcastically. “This is just what I needed.”

  Monty either misread or ignored my tone. “Picked it up at a flower stall down the street,” he said, preening in the pride of his purchase. “The vase caught my eye as I was walking by. It was sitting on a counter at the front.” Monty rotated the vase in his hands. “It sucks you in, doesn’t it? The owner helped me pick out the tulips. Freshly cut this morning.”

  I took the vase from Monty and placed it on the cashier counter, sliding it back and forth to find the best light. It was a nice vase, I had to admit.

  A movement across the street caught my eye. “Monty, there’s someone at the door to your studio.”

  He whirled around. “Right, that’ll be Dilla.” He sprung out the door, then pirouetted back and stuck his head inside. “I’ll come by later this afternoon, so we can work on the board presentation.”

  He was gone again before I could spit out my response. I watched as he rushed across the street to greet an elderly woman standing at the door to his studio. She was color-fully dressed in a bright orange suit, trimmed along all of its edges with a detailing of reddish-orange fur. They greeted each other wit
h kisses on each cheek; then he bent to a deep bow as he held the door open for her to enter the studio.

  With an appreciative nod to my newly acquired green vase, I locked the door and headed home for lunch.

  Chapter 12

  FOUR HOURS LATER, I was back at the Green Vase, sitting in the kitchen listening to Monty expostulate on the finer details of historical renovation for our upcoming board proposal. Ivan had managed to escape this torture session due to an alleged prior engagement.

  I laid my throbbing head on the kitchen table as Monty gabbled on about brick textures and glass thicknesses. My forehead found a particularly soothing groove in the pine plank surface, and I closed my eyes trying to shut out the whining drone emanating from the other side of the table.

  The floor around us was still sopping wet from my first unfortunate episode with Oscar’s dyspeptic dishwasher. Trapped in the kitchen with a monologueing Monty, I’d begun tidying up the area. I had scraped several layers of chicken grease off of the stove and—with Isabella’s diligent supervision—had removed all sorts of unidentifiable organic matter, in various states of decay, from the refrigerator. But my cleaning frenzy had terminated when I’d gathered up a load of dishes and unwisely flipped the start switch to the dishwasher.

  At least the subsequent flood had earned me a temporary break from Monty’s endless renovation lecture. He’d stopped long enough to help me mop up most of the water. Unfortunately, he was now back at it, tilted back in his chair, wingtips propped up on the edge of a nearby stool.

  Monty’s current topic revolved around what shade of green to paint the crenulated iron columns that framed the bricks and windows along the front of the Green Vase. He picked through a reel of paint chips, searching for suitable options.

  Holding up one of the small pieces of paper between his fingers, Monty commented, “Dollar bill green—the color of money. Appropriate for an accountant, I should think.”

  “I thought we agreed not to make any more public statements about the accounting idea,” I said warily.

  “Right,” he responded in a voice I suspected meant the opposite. “Of course.”

  From my semi-prone position on the table, I had begun to wonder what means Oscar had used to so successfully eradicate Monty from the Green Vase. A hefty frying pan hung from the ceiling near the stove—it looked like just the right size for swinging at his curly, pin-shaped head. I was about to walk over to take a closer look at it when Monty finally started winding down for the night.

  “That’s probably more than we’ll need for the board meeting,” he said, carefully filing his sketches in his leather portfolio. He dropped his pencils into their plastic case and straightened up his bow tie. “They probably won’t want more than a two-minute summary anyway.”

  I eased myself up off the table and looked around for the cats; I’d brought them back with me after lunch. I found them curled up together in a dry corner of the kitchen and nodded to Isabella. She responded with a sharp “Mrao” and headed down to the first floor where I’d left the cat carriers. I plucked a sleepy Rupert up off the floor and followed Monty out of the kitchen.

  He tiptoed around the last pools of water and started down the steps, the soles of his wingtips clapping on the wooden boards of the staircase.

  “These old buildings always make me nervous,” Monty said, ducking his curly head under the low-hanging beam in the stairwell. “You never know what might be hiding in all the cracks and recesses. I had a close call not too long ago—over at Frank’s. Some sort of exotic spider had crawled up into his rafters. It dropped down and bit me on the ear. The whole lobe swelled up—it looked like I had a grapefruit stuck on the side of my head!”

  Monty reached up to his head and tugged on his ears, as if trying to ensure that they were free of any lobe-enlarging arachnids.

  “You’d think the spider would have gone after Frank, what with that mustache he’s got,” Monty said as we reached the bottom of the stairs. “You know, for nesting materials.” He gently slapped the sides of his face. “I like to keep a clean shave—for just that reason.”

  “Mmmm,” I mumbled behind him, relieved to be exiting the building at last.

  “Frank’s mustache reaches way out over the top of his lip,” Monty nattered on in front of me. “He must spend hours combing it—there’s never a hair out of place. The mustache is so enormous, you hardly notice his nose.”

  This did not match the description of Napis as I remembered him, but, with my car in sight at the curb outside, I wasn’t about to start asking questions. Monty helped me carry the cat carriers out to the sidewalk, and I pulled the iron-framed door shut behind us.

  “I’d never be able to grow one,” Monty said thoughtfully. “They’re too itchy—and I don’t know how Frank manages to eat with his.” Monty drew a quarter-sized circle on the tip of his chin. “But I’ve been thinking about growing a micro-beard right about here.”

  I opened one of the backseat doors to the Corolla and shoveled the two cat carriers inside. Monty was still carrying on about facial hair as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “I saw that Leidesdorff plaque you told us about—the one over in the financial district with his picture on it. It’s got me thinking about extending my own sideburns a bit. Not full on lamb chops, mind you, more of a thin line here around the jaw area.” He stood admiring his face in the dusty reflection of the Green Vase’s windowpanes.

  “Good night, Monty,” I said, closing the driver’s side door and turning the key in the ignition.

  “THIS IS QUITE the setup you’ve put together here,” I said, surveying the scene on the sidewalk outside the Green Vase the following afternoon. Ivan was scheduled to come by to review our proposal before the board meeting later that evening. Monty had prepared a tea service for the occasion.

  A white china tea set had been laid out on a round plastic table. Delicate pink roses detailed the rim of each cup as well as the handle of the hot water pot.

  I pulled out a seat as Ivan walked up.

  “My lady,” Ivan said, pushing my chair in with an amused look on his face.

  “Thank you kind sir,” I replied as Monty leaned over to pour steaming water into my cup.

  Monty presided over the tea service, directing the small symphony of cups and saucers. Our conversation had turned to that night’s board meeting when an elderly Asian man tottered up to the table and greeted us.

  “Good afternoon,” he said with a slight dip of his head.

  The man was frail, his body rail thin. A baseball cap, one size too large, perched on his large protruding ears, while a pair of dark trousers swallowed up his entire lower half. He leaned towards me, his thin lips parting to reveal tobacco-stained teeth. “I’m looking for Oscar’s niece?”

  “That’s me,” I volunteered, standing up to introduce myself.

  “Hello, Mr. Wayne,” Monty called out, waving from his chair on the opposite side of the tea table.

  The paper-thin skin on the man’s pallid face stretched tensely, but he smiled again and bowed slightly in Monty’s direction. “My name is John Wang,” he said to me, emphasizing the pronounciation of his last name. “Mr. Carmichael,” he paused, nodding in Monty’s direction, “stopped by my flower shop the other day.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, making the connection. “Where he got the vase. It’s a perfect fit for my store.” I motioned to the gold writing on the front of the new door.

  “Yes, this is nice,” Mr. Wang said as he looked over at the entrance, studying it carefully with alert eyes that seemed to take in every detail. He turned back to the tea table. “I am very sorry for your loss,” he said kindly, his reedy voice scratching. “Your uncle was my friend.”

  “Thank you,” I replied gratefully. There was an oddly comforting, grandfatherly way about him, despite the sweaty tobacco aroma exuding from his clothes. A well-used pipe poked out of his shirt pocket.

  “Your uncle wanted you to have this,” he said, pulling a flat, r
ectangular package out of his back pocket and handing it to me.

  I turned the package over in my hands. It was less than an inch thick and covered with a brown paper wrapping. My name was written on one side in a cramped scrawl I recognized immediately as Oscar’s.

  “Oscar gave it to me a couple of weeks ago,” Mr. Wang said. “Not long before he died.”

  I turned the package over in my hands, my eyes instinctively looking for yet another three-petaled tulip.

  “He asked me to deliver it to you.” Mr. Wang looked at me with deep, solemn eyes. “In case something happened to him.”

  “Happened to him?” I repeated the words, hearing the ominous phrase for the second time in as many days.

  Chapter 13

  MR. WANG’S FRAILfigure teetered off down the street as I excused myself from Monty’s tea service. I climbed the stairs to the kitchen, laid the package on the table, and collapsed into one of the worn seats.

  The resilience I’d built up in the days since the funeral melted away. The package sat on the table like a bomb, waiting to explode. I hunched in my chair, biting my lower lip, my eyes trying to penetrate the layers of brown packing paper.

  Sighing resignedly, I slipped the edge of a pair of scissors underneath a fold and began to cut through the layers of tape. In typical Oscar fashion, the package was virtually waterproof from his wrapping. Not an inch of the paper remained uncovered by strapping tape.

  At long last, I’d cut through enough of the outer shell to access the inside. I reached in and pulled out a weathered parchment that was folded up like a street map. The worn and beaten document cracked as I opened its accordion-like pages. Unfolded, it spanned about two feet by three feet. The printed side contained streets and a shoreline from an earlier time that I recognized immediately—it was San Francisco during the first blazing days of the Gold Rush.

  I’d come across several old city maps in the Green Vase showroom, but this was one of the earliest versions I’d seen. In this depiction, the shoreline had not quite reached our block in Jackson Square. The land that the Green Vase would soon occupy was still under water. The kitchen table where I was sitting looked to be about forty to fifty feet into the bay, near the mouth of a small inlet cove. A short bridge had been built over the narrow opening of the cove to allow foot traffic to the other side.