Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Au Revoir, Max

Somehow, during the night, he’d managed to turn himself over from sleeping on his stomach to his back.

Pretty impressive for an invalid.

The morning sun was slanting through the drawn sheer curtains, slashing light across the golden birchwood floor, on the pristine white comforter.

His stomach rumbled, craving more food.

He stretched out an arm. He’d never sensed her again in the night, not after the massage that had put him out cold. No, out warm. No dreams. No nightmares.

His hand sunk into a foot of airy feathers, nothing more.

He pushed up on his elbows, giving his leaden legs a bit more rest.

Nothing there. He was alone in the room.

Alarm racing down his limbs.

Wait. It was morning. She was waiting her turn at the bathroom, or already in it. In fact, his bladder was burning. He’d slept too hard to use the chamber pot under the bed. But he sure needed relief now.

He’d have to—unnh—spin and get his feet to the floor. There was the cane. Put his weight on it, stand. Shake a little. He’d go to the hall bath in his shorts. If he met anyone, tough. No point shrugging into the jeans again until he was ready to go out in them. His legs were stiff from being unused all night. He walked like Frankenstein’s monster, as if the casts were still on them.

But his joints were loosening by the time he got to the door.

Peeking out into the hall, he saw it was deserted. She must be in the bath then.

His steps and the clunk of the cane sounded like The Return of the Mummy. He swung his legs stiffly ahead one by one. The knees would take a while relearning to bend.

There was no splashing sound beyond the old wooden door, so he exercised his knuckles and knocked. Maybe he could talk her into a morning massage. It had really helped him sleep.

No answer.

He tried the knob, which gave. The bathroom was empty. He pushed himself inside, looked it over hard. Not even one vagrant blond hair in the sink from washing her hair last night. Some Swiss neat freak had freshened up the place for the day already.

Whoever he was had been a sensible guy. He took a leak while here, hand-brushed his dark hair, then clumped down the hall, pushed his tender legs into the jeans. He noted that her backpack was gone, packed his own, took a look around to make sure nothing was left behind, and went downstairs to the “expanded Continental” breakfast room. That would mean muesli as well as bread, fruit, coffee, and tea.

A German couple with a teenage daughter were chewing their cuds at one table. The buffet offerings looked picked over. Max finally thought to glance at the cheap watch with a cuckoo clock on the dial he’d bought on their first nicked credit card spree last night.

Eleven! In the morning?

Where the hell was she? Out on the town? It boasted a square the size of King Kong’s handkerchief, a fountain, some quaint shops, and that was it.

His heart was pounding. He lurched through the pocket lobby and into the streets. Still narrow, hilly, mostly empty, leading to the square where the tourist buses stopped on their overland way from Italy to France. This village was a remote way station between twelve-thousand-foot peaks.

Why would she leave? Now? She was just softening him up, damn it.

Or . . . she had been taken.

His crutch.

Someone had caught up with them, wanted him on his own, more vulnerable.

Or, she had joined someone who’d always followed them, now watching him from a distance, waiting to see what he did, where he went, when he was alone again.

It didn’t make sense, either scenario, with Revienne cast as either villain or victim.

He knew what he had to do: keep moving, keep supplying himself with stolen and soon-ditched credit cards, get to a large city. Find some way to arm himself with more than a hokey carved cane, although no ideal weapon came to mind.

“Max” had been facing a lot worse for half a lifetime from what Garry Randolph had said. And his legs were really pretty good, considering. Too bad there wasn’t a tiny bit of level ground in this whole damn handkerchief country . . . !

He recognized the fear underneath his anger at this sudden change in circumstances, this desertion. That he didn’t know who he was or where he could go and he didn’t dare tell anyone that, because then he’d be revealed as vulnerable and enemies could come circling like mad dogs.

Around him the life of the square bustled on. The shriek of the huge buses’ brakes, the rush of babbling tourists in and out of shops, the tinkling fountain, all the ordinary sounds scraped his nerves raw.

No one noticed him. As far as he could tell.

He felt like a kid lost in a department store. Mommy!

Ridiculous! He didn’t need a keeper, or an anchor. It was time he was truly on his own, then.

High time.

Maybe he’d retrieve his survival instincts by finding out what had happened to Revienne. Why would she have deserted him after hauling him so far, with so much effort? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d been snatched.

Maybe she was also a target. After all, she’d been interrogating him for days.

He started over the cobblestones, so quaint and damnably uneven, leaning as little as possible on his cane. A truly lame man stood out. A tourist enamored by an Alpine souvenir didn’t.

He’d start in the shop where they’d bought the new clothes. He’d have to concoct a likely story for his inquiries.

His wife had left the inn to get some extra film for the camera. Wait. No. Everything was digital these days. Some . . . sunscreen for the thin mountain air. Blond, you remember? Very sensitive to sunburn. Had anyone seen her this morning? His beautiful blond wife.

The description felt alien, but a magician was an actor at heart. He could sell any illusion.

His beautiful blond wife.

Like his sanitarium patient name, Michael “Max” Randolph, that just didn’t feel right. Not the blond part. Not the wife part.

From his unease in the role, he gathered he wasn’t the marrying kind.