Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 32

Louie is Knocked Out

I awake, prone. I expect to be in a cage, but it is worse than that. I lie in a sort of homemade pen.

I recognize the room right off: small, pale, with a long table covered in white cloth and a smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant.

Despite the long, cloth-covered table, this is no dining room. There is only one chair, a rolling stool, in the corner. There is a built-in cabinet full of things that smell harsh and antiseptic.

Every bone in my body aches, and every muscle, and my head most of all.

I know I have been put into an artificial slumber with chloroform or some more powerful anesthetic. My memories of my arrival here last night are confused. This Mickey Finn they pumped into my veins is not helping me any.

The cab ride cost eight dollars and seventy cents. Miss Savannah Ashleigh tipped the driver a buck. I made sure to remember the amount in case I need to retrace my route here. I remember the driver grumbling about cheapskates. (As far as I know, skates are not very cheap these days; those on-line blades cost a small fortune.)

Uh! Why can I remember the small stuff and not the big? The room goes in and out of focus, like the walls are breathing and I am not. All right. The office was officially closed. I remember the doctor, a man in a white coat, (really precise ID, Louie!) complaining that he had no staff, no nurse.

"I will be your nurse," Miss Savannah Ashleigh had volunteered in an iron tone.

He had fussed some, about not being licensed for this. About criminal mischief. What about my owner? he had asked.

"He is a stray. An alley cat. No one owns him," she had answered honestly enough, vitriol searing every word.

The thing is, Miss Savannah Ashleigh believed that she was lying, that she was concealing Miss Temple Barr's relationship to me.

I can read the handwriting on the prescription pad. I am here to be put to death. It may be a private execution, but it will be as final nevertheless. I wonder what the Divine Yvette will be told. Probably that I ran off, never to return. What will Miss Temple Barr think? That I was run over or lost. She will search every crack in the Las Vegas concrete for me, leave no grain of sand unturned, but it will be useless. No one knew of my mission to the Goliath. No one will suspect that I was carried off by a vengeful, crackpot film star. No one will know. Ever.

I sigh. I plan to fight every inch of the way, but suspect I will not be given much chance. I may even be gassed in the Divine One's carrier, oh irony of ironies!

Now would be a great time to deliver one of my favorite closing speeches. "It is a far, far better" et cetera.

But there is nothing better about this predicament.

When the doctor comes at me with the needle, I duck and twist and buck, but ultimately feel the final prick. I do not understand why he is so reluctant. Surely he performs such nefarious acts every day. I must be at a shelter, accused of being rabid or some such story.

Certainly Miss Savannah Ashleigh acts as if she has some say-so over the doctor's actions.

But that was then ... and this, much to my surprise, is now. I find myself awake, as I did not expect to be ever again.

Now I feel pain.

And I realize that my fate is to be far more horrible than a quick a nonymous death in a neat little room.

I am to be kept alive. I am to be tormented. I am secretly in stir. But while there is life, there is a chance of escape, however slim. I am still a fighter.

And yet it strikes me, as I gaze at the merciless fluorescent light above me, that I am paying the ultimate price for something I did not do. I never once successfully touched the Divine Yvette. Not through any failure of my own intention, but through mere circumstance.

For the first time in my life, or what is left of it, I am able to state: I am a completely innocent dude.