by Nic Saint
Carl turned to her, an enigmatic smile on his face. “Erica and I are meant to be together, Miss Poole. And a love like that? That once-in-a-lifetime bond? You don’t break that up. So no, I’ll never divorce Erica, and if she tries to divorce me, I’ll fight her with everything I’ve got. In fact I’ll fight her till my dying breath. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Crystal,” said Odelia.
Just then, I suddenly had the feeling we were being watched. My skin crawled, and a shiver ran down my spine. But as I looked around, I couldn’t see anyone. There was just me and Dooley, Carl and Odelia, and his caddy, a young man who hadn’t spoken a word, and whose sole purpose seemed to be to carry Carl’s bag of clubs around all day. A sad life, I would have thought, and not unlike the life of a vassal carrying his lord’s sword, back in the day when knights were the cat’s meow and swords were the cat’s whiskers.
“He’s going to attack!” suddenly Dooley cried, and before I could stop him, he shot forward and launched himself in the direction of the famous golf pro. Lucky for him, just in that moment Carl bent down to tie a shoelace, and Dooley flew right over his head, then landed a few feet beyond his intended target.
“Dooley!” Odelia snapped. “What did I tell you?”
When Carl looked up, and saw the small gray ragamuffin, he frowned. “Cats,” he growled, his charming demeanor suddenly history. “I hate cats. They destroy the green.”
“Dooley, get back here!” I hissed as Carl took a firmer grip on his golf club, and seemed ready to take a good whack at my friend.
“Stay back, Miss Poole,” the golf pro said. “I’ll deal with this vile pest!”
“No!” said Odelia.
“Don’t be afraid,” Carl assured her. “I’ve dealt with the terrible beasts before. I never miss!” And to show her he meant what he said, he took a swing at a cowering Dooley!
“Stop it!” Odelia cried. “That’s my cat!”
Dooley, of course, wasn’t taking this kind of treatment lying down. When that club started to shift in his direction with deadly force, he scooted for cover, and quickly disappeared into the undergrowth.
“Your cat? But cats aren’t allowed on the links,” Carl pointed out, looking around for Dooley but failing to find him. And then of course he spotted me! “There’s another one!” he bellowed. “Stay back, Miss Poole! I’ll fix him for you! Stay still, you horrible beast!”
“No! He’s also mine!”
Carl stared at our human. “You brought two cats onto the links?”
Odelia shrugged, looking a little shamefaced now. “They like to follow me around.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Carl, looking annoyed. He frowned at me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take care of this fat orange one for you? He looks nasty.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Hey, buddy,” I said, taking a step forward. “First of all, I’m blorange, not orange. And secondly, I’m not fat, I’m big-boned.”
“And at least Max is not a sex maniac like you!” Dooley piped up from his hiding place in the brush, then quickly ducked his head down again.
“They seem to be very feisty animals,” said Carl, still holding onto his club, and clearly not having made up his mind whether to hit us and bury us right there or to leave us be. “Look, just tell my wife that next time she sends an emissary to argue for a divorce, she better send me someone who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to bring two cats onto the green,” said Carl, his charming demeanor a thing of the past. “I stand by my decision not to grant Erica her stupid divorce, and also, I don’t think you’re welcome here anymore, Miss Odelia Poole. And I’ll convey that thought to the club’s management.” He shook his head. “Bringing cats in here. Of all the crazy stunts…” And then he walked away.
And as we watched him stalk off, followed at a little distance by his profusely sweating caddy, carrying that bulky bag of clubs, it was obvious that Odelia’s mission was a bust. But it could have been a lot worse: it could have been fatal for Dooley and me!
6
“Look, It’s Odelia,” said Scarlett. She thought she’d noticed her friend’s granddaughter before, but hadn’t been sure it was her. Now, though, there was no question: Odelia was one or two holes ahead of them.
“She’s talking to that horrible Carl Strauss,” Vesta grumbled. “We should warn her about that guy. He’s got a reputation for being handsy.”
“I think Carl’s reputation precedes him,” said Scarlett. “Besides, there’s no way Odelia would ever get involved with a guy like that.”
“She better not. If she does, she’s a fool.”
Odelia and Chase had recently tied the knot, and never a more happy couple had presented itself to Scarlett. She’d never been married herself, of course, not being out of her mind, but Vesta had, and obviously it hadn’t become her. Marriage was clearly a good idea for Odelia, but it wasn’t for everyone.
“If he lays so much as a finger on her,” said Vesta, “I’ll…”
“You’ll do what? Odelia is old enough to take care of herself. Besides, she has Max and Dooley with her. And I’m pretty sure that if Carl tries any of his funny business, they’ll scratch that man up so bad he won’t recognize himself in the mirror anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s one thing people underestimate about cats: they think they are these cute and cuddly creatures, but they can turn vicious if you rub them the wrong way.”
“So what were you telling me?” asked Scarlett as she nudged the ball gently in the direction of the hole which was located somewhere beyond the horizon. At this rate it would probably take her another twenty strokes to arrive where she was supposed to.
“Well, I got this great idea for the house but of course my family want none of it as usual.”
“What great idea?” asked Scarlett, tongue between her teeth as she tried to measure the distance she still had to go. She was dressed the way she thought a true golfer should be dressed: white short skirt, white crop top and white sneakers. Vesta had already told her she’d dressed for tennis, not golf, but she knew never to take advice from her friend when it came to what clothes to wear.
“I want to build an extra couple of floors on top of the house, figuring it won’t cost us a lot extra, and we can rent them out as apartments or studios and make an extra buck.”
“Pretty sure you need a permit for that.”
“Not you, too!”
“It’s a fact, Vesta. Wanna build? Gotta get a permit.”
“Okay, so what if I get a permit. Then can I have my extra floors?”
“Do you have permission from the owners—Marge and Tex?”
“I’m an owner.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’ve lived there long enough. Pretty sure that after a while you automatically become an owner. It’s the law.”
“If that’s the law this is the first time I’ve heard of it.”
“If it isn’t, it should be. I have rights, too, you know.”
“You have rights if you buy a piece of the property. How much have you invested?”
“A lot! I’ve invested a lot of my time in that house.”
“You mean you’ve put in a lot of work?”
“You damn right I’ve put in a lot of work. I garden. I vacuum my room once a week, and I load the dishwasher. I even cook from time to time. What more do you want?”
“Look, Marge and Tex have been kind enough to take you in,” said Scarlett. “Most people would put their mom in a nursing home, so you should count yourself lucky you get to live with your family. So don’t you go and make life difficult for them, you hear?”
“I’m not old enough to live in a nursing home,” Vesta pointed out.
“You’re seventy-five!”
“Seventy-five is the new twenty-five. Now will you shut up for one second while I take this next shot. I can’t focus on my game with all your yapping.”
Vesta took the shot and… landed the ball in a sand bunke
r.
“Look, all I want is to make my daughter and her husband an extra buck,” she said. “Is that so bad?”
“It’s bad if you do it without asking them first. And also, after you destroyed their house I don’t think you’ve got many strikes left, Vesta, to be honest. The next one just might land your ass in that nursing home after all.”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t tempt them, okay?”
“Oh, tush. You’re just jealous cause I’m going to have a new kitchen soon and you don’t.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder why I ever thought being your friend would be easier than being your enemy.”
“Cause you love me!”
“I do, but don’t ask me why.”
“Come on. Let’s go and dig my ball out of that there sand.”
“You can’t dig out your ball. You need to hit it back onto the fairway with your club.”
“Says who?”
“Says the rules!”
“Rules are there to be broken, Scarlett, didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
“Oh, dear God,” said Scarlett, shaking her head. But she followed her friend as they trudged up a steep incline, then walked into the sand bunker to look for Vesta’s ball.
“Isn’t this fun?” asked Vesta as she picked up her ball and threw it back onto the fairway.
“If I’m absolutely honest I like my idea of going to the spa a lot more.”
“The spa! What’s fun about that! At least here you can meet the movers and the shakers of the world. Golfing is what it’s all about.” And with this, she crawled out of the bunker again, and gave her ball a good whack—this time in the right direction. Or at least it would have been the right direction if only a woman hadn’t been standing in the ball’s trajectory. It hit her in the side of the head with a dull thwack and she went down.
“You’ve definitely shaken that woman,” Scarlett said. “And moved her, too.”
7
“This isn’t right, Brutus,” said Harriet. “And you know it isn’t right.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Brutus. “We’re just going for a walk, that’s all.”
“In a dog park!”
“So? It’s just a park.”
“For dogs!”
Ever since they’d decided to leave the warm embrace of the Poole family, Harriet had had a tough time of it. Brutus’s big idea had been to leave the Pooles and join the Trappers instead, figuring that the Poole family was a guarantee for trouble and mayhem and the Trappers were exactly that kind of middle class family that they needed: quiet, peaceful, respectable, and guaranteed to offer them a warm and loving home. The kind of home they needed. Harriet hadn’t agreed, but she hadn’t wanted to see her one true love leave the nest either, and so she’d found herself joining him in staging an escape.
The Trappers at first had thought it a little strange that their small menagerie of one dog had been augmented with the arrival of two cats, but soon had seen the benefits: Brutus and Harriet were, after all, house-trained, and as everybody knows cats are the best mousers in the world, and since they’d recently suffered from a mouse infestation, they just figured that maybe this was the best thing that could have happened to them.
They’d talked things through with Marge and Tex, rightful owners of these two cats, and it had been decided that Ted and Marcie would take the two cats in on trial. If things ran smoothly, they got to keep them, and if not, they could always give them back.
The only problem was that Ted and Marcie weren’t used to having cats, and labored under the misapprehension that cats are exactly like dogs and should be treated as such.
Hence the twice-daily walks along the neighborhood to do their business.
And now the dog park.
“I just hope for your sake that there are no other cats around,” said Harriet. “Cause if there are, and they see us, we’re going to be the laughingstock of this town.”
“No other cats will be there, Harriet,” Brutus assured her. “It’s a dog park, remember? Cats wouldn’t want to be seen dead in a place like that.”
“Oh, and we would?”
“That’s different. The Trappers still have to get used to having cats. They need time.”
“This morning they took us for a walk again, Brutus!”
“Well, that’s not so bad, is it? Walking is good for you. And besides, I managed to have a pee and you should have seen Ted’s face when I did. He looked so happy and proud!”
“I had a pee, too, but that doesn’t make it any less humiliating. Cats aren’t meant to do their business on the street, Brutus. And in a recent past you would have railed against exactly that kind of unhygienic practice yourself!”
“I know, I know,” said Brutus soothingly. “But let’s humor them for now, shall we? I’m sure that once they get the hang of things, they’ll stop treating us like dogs and start treating us like cats instead.”
They’d arrived at the dog park, and Rufus, the Trappers’ big sheepdog, exclaimed, “We’re here, you guys. This is when the fun begins.” He actually looked excited to be at the park, which struck Harriet as very odd indeed.
“You really like this place, don’t you?” she said.
“What’s not to like! There’s other dogs, whose butts I get to sniff, and trees, and… other dogs whose butts I get to sniff!”
“Oh, Rufus, you are a very shallow dog,” said Harriet with a shake of the head.
But then Marcie released the big dog from his leash, and he was off like a bat out of hell, doing exactly what he’d told them he would: sniffing butts wherever he could!
“Isn’t he great?” said Marcie as she watched her dog’s progress. “Now it’s your turn, Brutus and Harriet. Go on and have some fun!”
Harriet and Brutus slunk off, and Harriet hissed, “If one dog so much as sniffs in my direction I’m scratching his eyes out, I’m warning you.”
“No dog is going to sniff at you, sweet pea,” said Brutus.
“They better not.”
“Look, it’s a process. And the sooner we get through it the sooner we come out the other side.”
They took up position next to a patch of fenced-in sand, and settled in for the duration.
“I miss my humans,” said Harriet after a pause.
“You have new humans, snuggle pooh.”
“Yeah, but I miss my old ones. I liked the Pooles a lot better than the Trappers.”
“It’s not as if they’re miles away. You can go and visit the Pooles any time you want.”
“I know, but it’s not the same and you know it.”
Brutus was silent for a moment, then said, “We just have to get through this difficult part. Soon we’ll get used to having new humans and we’ll be so much happier.”
“I miss Max and Dooley, too.”
“How can you miss them? You see them all the time!”
“I know, but we used to hang out together, now we’re like casual acquaintances.”
“We have Rufus now.”
They eyed the big dog who was gamboling around like a puppy, sniffing butts to his heart’s content, and Harriet sighed. “It’s not exactly the same, though, is it?”
Brutus gave her a gentle nudge. “Just hang in there. You’ll like it, you’ll see.”
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”
“Because we’re tired of all the excitement,” said Brutus. “The murder and the mayhem the Pooles are always getting involved with. At least now we have a peaceful life. Nothing but peace and quiet.”
Just then, a smallish dog with a squashed-up face came tripping up, and before Brutus could stop it, it had taken a good sniff at his butt.
“Hey!” Harriet cried. “No sniffing my boyfriend’s butt, all right!”
“Hold your horses, sister,” said the doggie indignantly. “This is the dog park. Nothing is off-limits here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t the
y tell you? Dog park is where dogs go native.”
“Native?”
“Back to nature, baby! Now let me get a good whiff of your perky little—okay, I guess that ain’t happening,” the doggie added when Harriet unsheathed a very sharp claw.
She eyed her mate narrowly. “We’re in Sodom and Gomorrah, Brutus. Sodom and Gomorrah for dogs!”
8
Since Odelia wasn’t really in the mood for golf, we returned to the golf club bar instead, where she took a table outside and ordered a coffee and started writing down bits and bobs of the chat she’d just had with Carl Strauss in the hopes of turning it into a short piece about the guy at a later date.
Dooley and I took up position underneath her chair and when a waitress provided us with a bowl of milk we were bowled over with the kindness she’d shown us, coming so shortly upon the heels of the attack on our lives by Mr. Strauss, clearly not a cat person.
“I don’t think I like Carl Strauss, Max,” said Dooley.
“No, I don’t like him very much either,” I had to admit.
“He hates cats, and he tried to kill me.”
“Yeah, not exactly the kind of behavior that makes a positive impression.”
“So he’s not only a sex maniac but also a cat killer,” Dooley concluded. “In other words, not a nice person.”
I smiled. “Dooley, you really have a way with words.”
But before we could thresh the matter out a little more, suddenly two unexpected visitors drew up chairs and joined us at the table. Reading from left to right, they were Gran and Scarlett!
“And? How did it go with the golf pro?” asked Vesta, eyeing her granddaughter closely, presumably looking for bite marks on her neck, or hickeys as I think they’re called in sex maniac jargon.
“His wife dropped by the office this morning,” Odelia explained, putting down her tools of the trade for a moment, “to ask if I could talk to her husband and make him grant her the divorce she wants.”
“Carl Strauss is getting divorced?” asked Scarlett. “Again?”