"Really? It seemed like minutes." Then he stopped, because her smile had softened and become . . . what? Conspiratorial? Knowing? What had he said? What had he said wrong?
"Time flies when I'm sketching," she said. "It's my form of therapy." She flipped the top sheet over Cliff Effinger, wiping away his sneering (how did she know that?), seamed face with the previous page, with .. . Matt's own likeness.
"When . . . how did you do that?"
"To warm up when we were first talking." She tilted her head to study her work, his face.
"Usually good-looking people are a bore to draw. Everything is surface, and the kind of charm that goes with good looks freezes into a kind of mask early on."
"It doesn't look like me," Matt said, almost to himself, then caught the implication. "I mean, it does, but I don't see myself that way."
"Good. I feel most successful when my subjects see themselves in a different way. You can have this one too."
"I'll pay extra," he began, plumbing the windbreaker pockets trying to remember where he'd put the checkbook.
Her be-ringed right hand waved away his offer. "I only take money for sketching the absent on these assignments. Come on, I promised to show you my paintings."
He reluctantly left the studio to follow her, left behind the naked sketchpad with its incriminating likenesses, of Cliff Effinger, of himself.
In the hall she pushed a button. Track fixtures all along the ceiling splashed slashes of light on the huge canvases lining the walls. It was like touring a Byzantine gallery--formal figures, almost totemic, men and women touched with barbarian flashes of gold leaf. He couldn't tell if they were shamans or saints, often if they were male or female, but all shared the trait of great personal power, of a brooding bitter spirituality that was quite the opposite of the sunny studio with the flower patterns splattered against white wicker.
He followed her into the main rooms to find the painting sequence commanding the wood-paneled walls there like Easter Island colossi flattened into pigment and then pressed onto canvas, like relatives who came to call and were impaled onto the walls.
"These are such inhuman figures," he commented.
She stopped, and smiled over her shoulder. "Funny, I used to know them all. I think maybe they were even more inhuman then."
"Do you have a theme? A--" He couldn't think of anything else to ask ... a reason, he meant. An explanation for such a strong and bitter vision.
She shook her head and led him into another, smaller room. They were in the opposite wing, a bedroom wing, and this was a child's room. A little girl's, to judge by the row of stuffed-animal figures on the single bed.
"That's the kind of family portrait work I do." Janice pointed to a pair of pictures at the bed's head.
He went closer to see. Full-faced children, the boy about eight, the girl younger. Their noses, chins, cheeks were plastic yet round and damp and undefined. Grave black eyes occupied almost all of their sockets as if their adult selves were imprisoned behind the mushy facades, peering out from peepholes a size too small.
"Lovely," he said, "but sad."
"Of course they're sad. They have to grow up."
Beyond the window Matt could see a corner of the yard, bright and pale in the autumn sunlight. Inside, the house was shadowed, secretive somehow.
Down the hall, the clock ticked.
Janice leaned against the pale lavender wall, hands behind her so she looked like a prisoner too. "I love them dearly, but sometimes-- these computer and summer-camp times--I appreciate the freedom."
"You're . . . alone with them?"
"Divorced, yes." Her look was direct. "Single parent is the proper oxymoronic expression, I believe. No Sweeney on site."
Until then he hadn't seen it, guessed it. He felt cornered, although she was the one who had her back to the wall.
He felt the immaculately kept, charmingly decorated, empty house all around him, holding its breath. This was a child's bedroom, there would be others, another, all empty, charming, waiting.
The clock ticked, measuring moments, and this one was trembling on the brink far too long.
His fault, of course, for being so stunned, for wondering if he were imagining things, for t hinking what he was thinking . . .
Which was that she was even more charming than her house, an artist full of energy and compassion, a quite-attractive woman who probably had far too few occasions to prove it. . .
Which was that no one was expected here for some time, maybe hours, maybe days . ..
Which was that adults did these things, acted on impulse, forgot that the clock always ticked and that one was supposed to be someplace else ...
Which was what harm would it do if care were exercised and both were certain to keep it tunelessly exciting and distant, and if loneliness got lost in the shuffle and no one would know and no one would be hurt, least of all the parties involved who were strangers and therefore risked less even as they risked more . ..
And he almost could see it, could see safety in a stranger, could see disguise in nakedness, could see just getting it over with, suddenly, for once and for all, in circumstances that could be called a dozen different things, not one of them premeditated ...
And he could see how nothing could be said and everything, and how no one could be to blame and everyone, and how people could do it all the time, maybe not the same people, but the same thing happening everywhere all the time . ..
And why not to him?
"Thank you," he said, and left the room.
Chapter 12
Midnight Munchies
This just missed being my unlucky last chapter, set at a feline funeral parlor, which is to say an anonymous little bonfire at Smoke Rise Farm.
While I am dying to learn what others may say about me once I am dead, I am also willing to leave this terminal bit of feline curiosity unfulfilled for quite some time. Nor am I ready to don the ashen mantle of the late Maurice One and his ilk. Besides, I have never been one to leave a feather or a fur unruffled, so for me Cat Heaven would be Hell, as bad as the state pen for a cop gone bad: a place full of old foes waiting to make my Afterlife as miserable as I made their Fore-life.
But those who hand Midnight Louie a banana peel to slip on usually have to watch me dance my way out of danger and come up singing, with a banana split.
And so it went at Gangster's. While I nearly did the splits avoiding the trip wire Maurice Two laid in my path, I managed to land on all fours (on my proper mark too) and am the cynosure of all eyes. (I am not sure what this cynosure is, but being a long, odd word, it must be hot stuff.) The director has flipped his toupee over my agile escape antics, only he interprets it as a "cat soft-shoe."
The dude whose suit I ruined while using it for a ladder to his shoulder is not complaining, as he will now have a close-up in the A La Cat commercial, for which he will have to give permission and therefore get paid. He is babbling to his fellow hoofers about his "big break" while the costumer is trying to pull snagged threads smooth and whimpering about having to resew from scratch, so to speak.
Meanwhile the Divine Yvette has taken advantage of her freedom and t he resulting flurry to rub back and forth most provocatively against my ruffled suit coat, purring, "You are such a natural performer, Louie. What an improviser! You must teach me that little jazz step you did on the way down; we would look great together and I would get more close-ups. This is my commercial, after all, big boy."
There is a bit of a subdued growl in her last words, but I do not blame her for coveting more camera time. So I turn my skin-saving routine into a simple cha-cha-cha, and she picks it up right away.
"Film that!" the director barks. "We can save a pile on computer animation if these cats keep up the good work."
So I get to do a little victory dance with my honey. Even the stupid flamingo fedora does not seem so bad at the moment.
"Get Louie's face tight," Kyle orders. "He looks like the cat that swallowed the canary, and that
is how a consumer of A La Cat should look. What a natural!"
Natural nothing! Although I show my usual savoir faire and aplomb, my stomach is in imminent revolt, not from my shocking plummet down the stairs, but from the lump of A La Cat I was forced to consume on camera. Ugh! It feels like one of those fabric-stuffed mice people are always forcing on undiscriminating house cats, a soggy, cotton-flannel wad in my stomach. I burp and the director goes ballistic.
"He burped! Did you get that? Great. We can put some really macho sound under it--after all, this is the alley cat--and intercut it with a shot of the blonde licking her dainty whiskers. That burp really says 'satisfied customer.' Hey, this is gonna work."
Well, nobody likes a happy director more than a performer, but I suspect that Miss Temple will be the beneficiary of a humongous hair ball on her coverlet around 3 a.m. this morning.
While I am the center of all attention, I cast a glance to the top of the stairs.
Yup. There he sits like some bronze statue out of antiquity, deceptively still. Maurice Two has witnessed his murderous scheme backfire. I have no doubt he is already dreaming up the second installment. I start up the stairs toward him.
By now, though, the director has ordered the cameras to back off and there is a race up the stage stairs. Two sets of high heels pound in tandem as the Divine Yvette's and my respective stage mamas each strive to be first to congratulate her darling.
Miss Temple wins by a nose, and a rather endearing, short nose at that, and sits beside me on the fifteenth step. Maurice lucks out again.
"Louie, are you all right?"
"Of course he is all right," Miss Savannah Ashleigh snaps from below. "He nearly crashed into my adorable Yvette while doing all that fancy footwork. What a showoff."
"A natural gymnast," Miss Temple corrects, not too gently, meanwhile tenderly probing my anatomy for sore spots.
I do not doubt that tomorrow my lean torso will feel the effects of those aerial acrobatics, but for now, all is clover.
The director is still babbling about what a great segment this is, and how he wants to get a bunch more shots on the set when possible. Even the human star of the show has wandered over and is now deigning to notice me.
"Clever fellow," he tells Miss Temple. He bends down so Miss Savannah Ashleigh cannot hear and also tells her, "Do not forget about coming to my Sunday brunch tomorrow."
She nods, paying him much less attention than a star like Mr. Darren Cooke is used to, all the while feeling the flexibility in my limbs, which are the usual wet noodles.
"Darren," Miss Savannah Ashleigh says, following him into the wings, my lovely Yvette trapped in her grasping arms, "was not Yvette wonderful?"
He can only agree, but I see that his heart is not in it, nor is Miss Savannah much in his heart or mind. I am happy to say that I and Miss Temple seem to have replaced her in his regard. I begin to wonder how I could drop in on his brunch on the morrow, for I am sure he would have asked me had he realized that I am willing to attend these little career-building social affairs now and then. Although Miss Temple is touchingly concerned about my welfare, she does not view me as quite the asset I am. She is clearly underestimating the scope of my future performing career, not to mention my many previous contributions to her dabbling efforts in the crime-solving department.
Miss Temple has become so carried away by my athletic exertions that she picks me up and actually attempts to rise. I see that I am to be toted back down to my carrier, and am much touched by her efforts, but fear she has overestimated her toting power. I am no lightweight normally, and with half a pound of A La Cat turning to concrete in my gut I am even more unwieldy than usual.
Miss Temple's dainty shoes kick the almost-fatal trip wire to the bottom of the stairs.
Nothing like stumbling over the evidence. She misses the second-to-the-bottom step on the set and teeters for a moment before she gets her balance back. Then she cranes her head over my swollen stomach to examine the floor.
"Tsk. Someone left a piece of wire onstage. How careless. I'll have to get it once you're back in your carrier."
No, no! I look up. Maurice is slinking down the stairs unnoticed, like any second banana. I am helpless to resist, although I do offer Miss Temple a few delicate pricks of warning.
"Louie! Don't fight. I'll let you out as soon as we're in the car. Union rules require you to have a container."
Of course by the time she has carefully minced down the steps to the stage, dumped me in the carrier and returned to do her good deed and pick up the rogue wire, it is ...
"Gone," she mutters to the empty stage and house. "I could swear I stepped right on it."
By now Maurice has batted it a few dozen yards away into the wings, and if he has any smarts, into the nearest waste receptacle.
I swallow a growl of frustration, but it is a small one. I doubt he left any pad prints on the wire, and besides, no human would think to look for them, anyway.
If one is going to commit murder, an innocent facade is the best disguise, and fur is fail-safe in that regard. However, that works both ways, and if Maurice persists in trying to turn me into cured ham, I may have to fix his bacon.
The expression makes my stomach growl, but first I have to be rid of that A La Cat. I believe I will shock and over joy Miss Temple by gobbling down that awful Free-to-be-Feline when I get home. A few swallows of that ought to make everything come up in a most satisfying way.
Chapter 13
A Cooked Goose
"Oh, Louie!"
The cold, wet lump under Temple's bare foot told her she needed her glasses after all.
She hopped one-legged (like a flamingo) back to the bed and its companion table. Putting on her glasses, she examined the suspect part of the parquet floor. Yes, a damp grayish glob, like a wet cigar, defaced the wood.
Temple sat on the bed edge and wiped the bottom of her foot with a tissue. She pulled six or seven more tissues from the box, then went back to collect, wrap and deposit the giant hair ball in the bathroom wastebasket.
Through all of this, Louie sat majestically on the zebra-striped coverlet, licking off more hair to end up in yet another Major Hair-Ball Production.
"I suppose because you're a TV star-to-be now you think your hair balls are cashmere."
Louie stopped licking to regard her thoughtfully. At least Temple assumed his manner was thoughtful. She would hate to think it was possibly disdainful. He pushed up on his front legs, then leaped to the floor, carefully treading around the damp area. But he limped a little.
"Louie, are you all right?"
She trailed him, barefoot, to the living room, where he took a turn into the kitchen. There he paused over the Free-to-be-Feline bowl he had actually honored last night by consuming some of the contents thereof. After a sniff he turned back to the living room and finally hopped up on the sofa.
His limp had evened out on his travels, so Temple opened her door to collect the fat Sunday paper and left it on the coffee table while she returned to the bedroom to contemplate her options.
What to wear to a Darren Cooke Sunday brunch was the problem. Temple didn't usually fret over what to wear, except to worry about forecast rain or unseasonable cold. But Temple didn't usually hobnob with the city's influx of celebrities. And Savannah Ashleigh would probably be there. For some reason, ever since they became dueling stage mothers, she felt rather competitive toward SA. At least she didn't want to embarrass Louie, who was now known even to Darren Cooke.
Maybe she should follow his example and always wear black. A muumuu like Electra, but black. Except. . . Temple wasn't that fond of wearing black. And white was too summery now and her closet was a bore, along with everything in it, and half of that everything needed dry cleaning or drip-drying or small repairs with needle and thread, which she had not laid hand to in months.
Of course her scheme to replace all her wire hangers with smooth plastic ones had fallen apart half accomplished, so every other outfit she wanted t
o examine was tangled with something else. What Temple bought depended on her mood that day as well as what was on sale, and given her theatrical background, her wardrobe had multiple-personality syndrome.
When Temple complained about her lack of a signature style, Electra said that at least she didn't have a range of six sizes to consider, and no notion which she would fit into on that particular day, as Electra had faced until she had converted to the all-accommodating muumuu.
Temple guessed that would happen to her in a decade, when thirty became forty.
She decided to do Hollywood chic out of the Beatnik fifties--a huge white shirt (discreetly touched with eighties rhinestones, like fallen crumbs) cinch-belted over black leggings. For shoes... she bent to dig among the pairs impaled on a chrome rack . . . something Savannah.
Aha! A pair of vintage high-heeled mesh sandals with flamingo-pink feathers on the toes ... just the thing! This would subtly (or not-so-subtly) combine her current two assignments: supervising Louie's film-world debut and running interference for Domingo's flamingo fandango.
A pair of thin black-enamel hoop earrings completed the Arlene Dahl look. "Bet you don't even remember Arlene Dahl, dahling," she told Louie as she scooped up her favorite black-patent tote bag, grabbed her car keys from the inside-cupboard hook in the kitchen and headed out with about seven minutes to spare. "Neither do I."
Arriving too early for a Hollywood bash was haute gauche, she was sure.
****************
The Oasis's fabled towers looked flat and faded in the daylight, but the giant pair of entry elephants stood at attention, one foot and two tusks each raised in welcome.
Sabu the elephant valet pulled his tasteful brocade turban firmly over his ears as he bent to squirm into the Storm and whisk it away. Temple felt the car at least deserved valet parking on such an occasion, and she didn't think that she or the flamingo shoes could take a long walk from the parking garage.
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