by Jo Watson
“Hi,” I said.
“Are you the groomer?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Beautiful cat. I think she stands a real chance, this year—but you didn’t hear that from me.”
I smiled and raised my finger to my lips in silence.
She winked at me and then leaned in and whispered, “Trim above the eye.” And, with that, she quickly walked away.
God! The pressure! The pressure! The fucking trimming. For some reason, I now felt compelled to do it, since everyone seemed to be telling me to do it. I lowered the scissors on to the cat’s face and focused my attention on the hair above her eye. I was about to cut, when . . .
AAATISHHHOOOOO!
I sneezed. And froze. I realized instantly that something very, very bad had happened. I opened one eye slowly, terrified to see what I’d done. Then I opened the other eye, and there wasn’t even time for me to respond, because I heard a gasp next to me. Then I heard a smack, followed by a splash, and then I felt a hot, wet burst of liquid at my ankle. I looked down. A cup of coffee lay on the floor. I followed the familiar legs up to Greta’s face. She was standing there, eyes wide and hands over her mouth, staring at her cat.
I turned slowly, and finally looked at the cat. I didn’t need to be a professional to know I’d made a terrible mistake.
“Oh no, oh no,” I said, staring at the cat.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Greta screamed, and people turned around. “You have mutilated my cat!” she yelled, pointing at the stripe of hair that was now missing from above one of the cat’s eyes.
“I . . . I . . . Sorry. It was a mistake. I . . .” I rambled loudly as a crowd started to gather.
Greta was fuming; she was turning a bright shade of tomato. “I can’t believe you let this woman groom your cat last year,” she said, and I swung around to see who she was talking to. As I did, I came face to face with a man and woman wearing very familiar-looking T-shirts. May the fluff be with you. This was so bad. The couple stared at me.
“I’ve never seen this woman in my life,” the man said, after looking at me for a while.
Another gasp. Even bigger than before. And then a finger was pointed in my direction. A big, shaking finger. God, this felt so familiar. Why did I inevitably cause a scene everywhere I went? “You’re not a groomer. Who are you?” Greta asked, with a trembling voice.
“I . . . I . . . I can explain,” I stuttered. Why do people who are caught red-handed always claim they can “explain,” when clearly they can’t? And then I did it, once again—I turned and ran.
CHAPTER 37
“IMPOSTER!” I heard a yell as I ducked behind a wall and hid.
“Where is she?” Greta sounded frantic, and then I heard a familiar voice.
“What’s going on here?” the voice asked.
I peered around the pillar and looked.
Oh my God! It was him. Why was he everywhere I went? Why couldn’t I escape this man, no matter how much I ducked and dived? I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled behind a mountain of cat cages.
I couldn’t hear what was being said, now, as the general sound level in the room shot up. I peered around the corner again and saw, with horror, that Mike was walking in my direction. I needed to hide. I needed to get out of here or I was going to be in such trouble. I looked around, trying to find a way out. The stage wasn’t that far in front of me and, if the details in the letters were correct, all I had to do was crawl under it and there should be a small door there that led to a secret room. It was only a few meters away; I decided to make a run for it, but Mike was coming closer and closer—too close. I needed a disguise, I needed something to hide behind, something big, something that would cover me, something like a . . .
I turned. A massive black face stared at me from behind the bars of its cage. Our eyes locked for a moment, and I knew what I needed to do. I opened the cage and pulled the massive black thing out. I held it up to my face and stood up slowly. My timing was perfect, because, at that precise moment, Mike walked right in front of me. He was so close that I could smell him as he went. That soapy, clean smell; that musky, spicy . . . And then, instead of walking off, he stood there—stopped and looked around the room, right in front of me.
He was no more than a few feet away from me, standing so close that, if I reached out an arm, I would be touching him. Touching him. Suddenly, the desire to do that overwhelmed me. I held my breath and kept the cat in front of my face (please, don’t sneeze) and waited, still as a statue. I really needed to get out of here; if Mike turned around and looked behind him, he was sure to recognize me. So, I did the only thing I could think of: I started walking straight to the stage, with the cat to my face. But, as I reached the stage . . .
“Countess Catatonia!” A piercing shriek brought the entire place to a standstill; even I looked around to see what was wrong.
“Countess Catatonia is gone! SOMEONE TOOK HER!”
Oh my God, who would have taken a ca—? I stopped. I turned my head slowly and looked back at the cat in my hands. It glared at me with a look of total and utter disdain. “Oh!” I said flatly, as I looked at the name tag hanging from her pink collar. The cat slowly licked her lips, as if she was contemplating taking a chunk out of my finger.
“What does Countess Catatonia look like?” I heard Mike’s voice again. God, he was such a busybody. Always coming to the rescue of something—a mythical mating bird, a fat black cat.
“She’s a black Persian!” The scream was so frantic, so panicked, that you would have thought the woman had lost her child in an aisle at the shopping center.
The black cat blinked at me, as if she knew exactly what was going on, as if she knew that everyone was now talking about her. And then chaos and pandemonium broke out once more. I heard another voice, and I wanted to cry.
“I know who took her! It’s that Sam woman who’s pretending to be a groomer.”
“Oh shit,” I mumbled, and looked at the cat.
“What does she look like?” It was Mike again.
I couldn’t stand there any longer. I ran to the edge of the stage, put the cat down on it, and then, as quickly as I could, I threw myself under the stage and crawled to the back of it. Once I was there, I collapsed with my back against the wall and closed my eyes. I could hear the madness in the hall. People rushing around. People calling out to each other. Loud whispers and gossip spreading like wildfire through the room, and I had caused it all.
“I found her. I found her!” I heard the frantic woman scream when she’d clearly found her cat on the stage. I opened my eyes and looked around. It was dark everywhere, except for a small shaft of light rushing through a hole in the wood. I crawled towards it and stuck my eye to it to see what was going on outside. I could see legs—a lot of them. One pair of legs belonged to Greta—I recognized that pattern on her pants—and another pair definitely belonged to Mike. I held my breath as I looked through the hole at what was happening. So many voices were talking at once and I couldn’t make anything out clearly, until a phrase jumped out at me and my heart thumped in my chest.
“Press charges?” I heard Mike say. “What would the charges be?” he asked.
Exactly!
“Animal cruelty. Impersonating a professional groomer. Emotional distress for both me and especially my cat.” It was Greta, and she was so beside herself.
Oh, please! This was such an act.
“Do you remember what she looked like? The woman who pretended to be a groomer?” Mike asked, and my blood stopped pumping. I held my hands over my mouth for fear that a squeal might slip out.
“YES! Absolutely.” She said it so emphatically that my whole body stiffened up. “She had these wicked eyes. You know, eyes you can’t trust. I should have known.”
At that, I rolled them.
“Can you give me some more details, please?” he asked.
There was a pause, and then she spoke again. “And there was something about her mouth, too.”
> “Her mouth?” he asked.
“Yes, she had a very puckered, witchy mouth. You know the kind. Like she was sucking on a sour lemon.”
“Oh,” Mike said flatly.
“Very evil-looking indeed.”
“Uh, well, maybe I could get my sister to come down here. She does our police sketches, when need be. And then we could get a sketch into circulation around town.”
“Yes, that would be great,” she said.
This was all so ludicrous. If I wasn’t legitimately in trouble, here, I might have popped out from under the stage and pointed that out. Cat hair grows back, and it’s not like I fucking stole that other cat and was halfway to Mexico with the thing and about to make it into guacamole. And now they were actually talking about a police sketch! I sighed, moved away from the hole and lay down on my back under the stage. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to . . .
Shit. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
CHAPTER 38
It had been fifteen minutes since I’d “stolen” the cat, and in that time Ash had arrived. I was still lying there, listening to it all—listening to Greta describe me as Ash drew, listening to Mike talking to the organizer of the event, who also happened to be staying in the damn eco estate and now had concerns about the security in this town generally. At least I didn’t have to worry about the identikit drawing of me; I mean, no offence, but I’d seen Ash’s art lying against the walls in the dining room—it was more abstract. I was about to pull my phone out and play Candy Crush while I waited for all the chaos to subside, when . . .
“Mmm, there’s something familiar about this face.”
I sat up straight when I heard Ash utter those dreadful words. Surely it wasn’t possible that, between Greta’s mad ramblings and Ash’s avant-garde flair for art, they would have gotten anything that could be identified as human, let alone me.
“She seems so familiar,” I heard Ash say to herself.
Shit! I crawled over to the hole and pressed my eye to it again. Adrenalin swooshed in my veins as I waited for the grand reveal. The minute it was shown to Mike, he would recognize me. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Mike,” Ash said. “I’m done. You can get this photocopied.”
The moment of truth.
“Let’s see,” Mike said.
I could see his legs moving again. He took a few steps, stopped, and then I heard some rustling of paper. There was a long pause and then I heard it. His tone was such a giveaway that I knew my time was very much over.
“Are you sure this is her?” he asked.
Oh, dear Lord!
“One hundred percent,” Greta said. “I will remember that face for as long as I live.” Her voice cracked when she spoke, as if she was about to cry.
Great! So now I was a face that she would remember forever. Just what I needed.
“Okay,” Mike said, sounding strange and tentative. “I’ll go over to the station and get some photocopies of it and start distributing it around town.”
“Thank you,” said the man that I’d identified earlier as the organizer of the event.
And then the crowd started moving off. I waited to see what Mike would do next, peering through the hole like a creepy stalker.
Ash was also still there, and she whispered, “Jesus. I recognize that face.”
“Me too,” Mike said. “Me too.” And with that cliffhanger (cue dramatic cliffhanger music in my head), both of them decided to walk away, leaving me crouching there, feeling sweaty and sick with nerves.
Well, this was it. As soon as I stepped out from under the stage, I would be recognized, apprehended and this time probably “booked” or whatever they called it. In a few hours’ time, I would have a criminal record, so I might as well look around and get what I came for, and then I would leave and march myself straight into the police station. Maybe Mike would take pity on me. But probably not.
I crawled deeper into the space under the stage. According to the diary entry, there was a small door that led into a room. It was unlikely that whatever I was looking for was still there. I mean, what were the chances that this room had not been disturbed in seventy years? I crawled my way past some old costumes and props. A pile of old velvet curtains that had obviously been taken down and replaced with new ones. I crawled past an empty Coke can, a discarded condom wrapper . . . Eeeew. I crawled a little faster and finally I got to the back and found what I was looking for. There it was, the—
“Shit!” I hissed to myself when I saw it. “No.” I reached for the pieces of wood that had been hammered over the small door and pulled on them. They were not going anywhere, unless I had a crowbar in my bag, which I did not.
All of that drama for absolutely nothing! All that cat maiming and stealing and running and hiding and getting my face plastered all over town . . . for nothing. I hung my head and slumped against the wall, feeling totally dejected. Maybe I had been wrong about this whole thing. Maybe I wasn’t meant to tell this story, after all. Not that I was basing that on anything scientific, other than some half-imagined voice that I thought I might have heard in the early hours of the morning.
Seriously, what was wrong with me?
CHAPTER 39
I waited until the stream of people started filtering out of the hall before I decided to step out myself. I was bracing myself for that moment when I got recognized by one of the cat crowd, because God knows what they would do to me. Would I be tarred and furred?
I walked out of the hall and into the throng of people in the parking lot, who were all getting ready to parade their Persian cats down the street. God, this was a bizarre ritual. I needed to get to my car, but there were at least a hundred people between me and my vehicle.
I could see someone handing out bits of paper and could hear them saying, “Have you seen this woman?” I shrugged to myself. Clearly, my days of being a criminal mastermind were over. I pushed past a few people and came face to face with the man handing out flyers. He stopped and looked at me for a moment or two.
This was it! The moment that the alarm bell was sounded and I was dragged off. Only it wasn’t. The paper was thrust into my hands and the man didn’t even say a word to me. I turned and watched him walk away, no recognition on his face whatsoever.
Slowly, shakily, nervously, I raised the poster to my face. I gasped when I saw the image, and then burst out laughing—so loudly that people around me stopped and stared.
I waved the poster at them. “Just terrible! Terrible what someone can do to a cat!” I said, and then walked off to my car, a sense of amusement and utter relief washing over me.
I knew why this poster looked familiar—because apparently I looked like the love child of Liza Minnelli and Frank-N-Furter.
It was already late afternoon by the time I left the cat parade and headed back to the house. I did a few drive-bys first to make sure there was no sign of Mike. There wasn’t. I walked into my room and the first thing I noticed was a small folded note on the floor. I opened it and peered inside.
Since you’re a writer, I thought you might be interested in our library! No one goes there anymore, but I unlocked it for you. It’s on our side of the house, first door in the passage in front of you. You can come by and use it anytime you like. It has some really old books in it—many belonged to my grandmother, too! Ash.
I dropped the note on the bed. A stab of guilt and shame and other bad feelings wacked me in the belly. She was so nice, and I was . . . was . . . a . . . I was, uh—
“Library?” I uttered to myself. Why did that sound so fam—? “Oh my God!”
I raced over to the letter and opened it.
I’ve found a better hiding spot for my letters to you. You will be able to get them there. I’m putting them inside my “favorite book.” Please go and look for them as soon as you can, in case there is a change in plans.
My mind started to race again, and I ran over to her diary. I opened it carefully, so as not to cause any more damage, and start
ed scanning the pages as I went, looking for any reference to a book. A passage caught my eye and I stopped to read it.
Dear Diary,
Miriam tried to deliver the letter to A today, but he was gone. His house was empty, all his things had been packed up and no one knows where he went. And now I don’t know where he is—I even packed my bag, ready to run away with him, but he’s gone. Miriam thinks it’s for the best that he’s left town. She says she doesn’t want to see me arrested—but, if I can’t have A in my life, they might as well put me in jail, anyway.
I brought my hand up to my mouth when I read that. Edith had wanted them to run away together and he’d just disappeared. Where had he gone? I continued leafing through the diary, looking for a clue as to what this “favorite book” might be. But there was nothing, only more heartbreaking entries about how she was being forced to marry a man she didn’t love.
I closed the diary, stood up and started pacing the room. What was her favorite book? I felt like I knew the answer to the question, I felt like it was right in front of my eyes somewhere and I just wasn’t seeing it. I stopped walking and looked at the bath—I probably needed one. I’d barely slept, had been wearing the same clothes for two days, and my pants were covered in dust and spider webs from crawling under the stage. And clearly I wasn’t going to figure this mystery out. I peeled my clothes off as I ran a bath, and then I slipped into the warm water. I was just about to fully submerge myself when I looked down; there was something stuck to my boob. I pulled it off and looked. It was the folded piece of paper I’d stuck inside my bra, two days ago. I was about to toss it on to the floor when something stirred inside me. I sat up in the bath and slowly opened it. I looked at the drawing through the veil of steam that was curling up from the hot water.
“Shit!” I sat straight up when it dawned on me, when it clicked into place. I knew what her favorite book was!