Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

8

An ancient story tells about a prince who died and went to heaven. As he always had, his dog followed him. At heaven’s gate, the gatekeeper said, “You can’t bring a dog in here, he’ll have to stay outside.”

The man said, “This dog has been the most loyal friend I’ve ever had. He’s stayed with me through my every loss and humiliation, and he’s celebrated with me my every success. I cannot enter heaven and leave my best friend outside. If he can’t go in, I won’t go in either.”

At that, the dog was revealed as a god in disguise, and they went in together. According to the story, that’s why dogs are called dogs, because they’re really gods in disguise.

I thought about that story when I got to Mazie’s house. Pete was in the kitchen crouched beside Mazie, who lay by Jeffrey’s chair with its empty booster seat. Pete’s shaggy eyebrows were so low I could barely see his eyes.

He said, “She didn’t eat last night, and she didn’t eat this morning. She’s too sad.”

I wasn’t surprised. Dogs don’t have superficial love or shallow devotion. They don’t ever wonder if it would better serve their own interests to switch their loyalties to somebody else. Once they give their hearts to one person, that’s where their commitment lies, and they grieve the loss of a loved one the same way humans do. For a service dog like Mazie, her sense of loss was even more acute.

I knelt to stroke Mazie’s head. “Did Hal call?”

“Not yet. It’s too soon.”

I went to the cupboard and shook some kibble into my hand, then went back to sit on the floor beside Mazie.

I said, “Jeffrey will be back, Mazie. And you have to keep your strength up so you can take care of him when he comes home.”

As I said it, I sent a mental photo of Jeffrey giggling and hugging Mazie, while Mazie’s tail beat with wild happiness. Some people think I’m nuts to send pictures to animals, but the animals seem to get them, so I keep doing it.

She lifted her head, sniffed the kibble, and ate one or two nuggets.

Pete said, “She needs to eat more than that.”

“If she’s drinking water, she can fast for a day or two with no problem. Remember, don’t try to tempt her with people food. When she’s ready, she’ll start eating again.”

Pete reddened, as if he might have already offered her a bite of his own breakfast.

Trying to act as if I were as confident as I sounded, I got Mazie’s leash and took her for a walk. She came along docilely, but her heart wasn’t in it and she kept looking back toward her house. I didn’t keep her out long. As soon as she had done her doggie business, we ran home at a fast clip.

I looked toward Laura’s house, but all I could see were trees and the driveway. It was just as well. I was still embarrassed to have eavesdropped, and I needed some time before I saw Laura again.

Back at Mazie’s house, I handed her off to Pete, told him I’d be back around three P.M., and scooted to the Bronco with visions of breakfast dancing in my head.

On the way to the diner, I stopped at a traffic light and noticed a hand-lettered cardboard sign taped to a light pole: LOST CHIHUAHUA PUP! REWARD! CALL LYON’S MANE. There was no phone number or address, which I took to mean that whoever printed the sign assumed that everybody knew where and what the Lyon’s Mane was. Which they probably did. The Lyon’s Mane was the salon Laura had mentioned, a pricey place for people accustomed to big-city stylists and big-city fees. Needless to say, I’d never been there.

A car honked behind me and made me aware the light had changed, so I moved on with the herd. Somebody had been busy putting up that LOST CHIHUAHUA PUP sign, because it was at every intersection. A block away from the Village Diner, I spotted the little guy cowering under an oleander bush. I pulled off the street and got out of the Bronco, moving as slowly as I could so as not to frighten him. Even adult Chihuahuas make me feel like a big ogre, they’re so small and dainty. A Chihuahua pup is like a fairy dog, all big eyes and dancy legs.

I knelt down and spoke softly while my hand crept forward, palm up. “Don’t be scared, it’s okay. I’m going to take you home.”

I slipped my hand under the pup’s chest and lifted his front paws off the ground, then did a one-hand lift to cuddle him against my own chest.

I said, “How in the world did a little bitty thing like you get so far away from home? Did a hawk pick you up and carry you? Catch a ride on a turtle?”

He didn’t answer, just burrowed into my bosom as if he liked the warmth.

I thought he’d been through too much trauma to add a ride in a stranger’s car, so I walked through some parking lots and side streets to the Lyon’s Mane. At the salon, I pulled open the glass door and stepped into the odor of shampoo, styling products, and singed hair. A young woman with lizard-green eye shadow and hair in white Statue of Liberty spires stood behind a tall reception desk talking on a phone. Before I got to her, a ponytailed marionette of a man came clattering around the desk on backless clogs. His arms were raised from the elbows and his hands were flapping excitedly.

“Oh, my God, you’ve found Baby!”

He grabbed toward me, and I hastily put the puppy into his grasping hands. The puppy licked the man’s lips while he cooed and kissed its nose.

I said, “He was under an oleander bush. They’re poisonous, so I hope he didn’t try to eat any of the leaves.”

“Baby? Eat a leaf off a bush? Hell, Baby won’t even eat dog food! My wife feeds him off her plate.”

I smiled and nodded, polite as anything, and edged toward the door. I’d done my good deed for the day, and breakfast was close by.

The man said, “Hold on! There’s a reward for bringing Baby home.”

I waved him off like Lady Bountiful telling the peasants they didn’t owe her anything. “That’s okay. Glad to do it.”

He stopped patting Baby and stared at my head. “No offense, hon, but who’s been cutting your hair? The yard man?”

Actually, I’d cut it myself, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job. My hair is straight and just hangs there, so cutting it isn’t like rocket science. Nevertheless, my hand went anxiously to my head. Suggest to a woman that her hair is bad, and her hand is compelled to feel it.

“You think it’s uneven?”

“Doll, if it was any choppier, people would get seasick just from looking at it. Sit down and I’ll even it up for you. A reward for rescuing Baby.”

I gave a fleeting thought to breakfast, and dropped into his chair. No woman in her right mind would turn down an opportunity to get her hair trimmed by a master stylist.

I said, “Maybe just a teeny bit off.”

He flapped a hand from a loose wrist. “Sweetie, you just leave it to me. You’re gonna love it. By the way, my name’s Maurice.”

He pronounced it Maur-eeese.

I said, “I’ve heard of you. My friend Laura Halston is one of your clients.”

As soon as I said it, I was afraid I’d mentioned Laura’s name to elevate myself from a strange woman in cheap shoes to a person who was in the same league with his clientele.

He said, “Oh, Laura! Isn’t she gorgeous? And just as down-to-earth as she can be.”

He scooted away to settle the pup in its own monogrammed basket, and I looked at the hair stuff laid out on his workstation. I didn’t know what half of it was. A shallow shelf under the work top held a couple of glossy glamour magazines, and I pulled one out and looked at the photograph on the cover. It was the generic photo that every glamour magazine has—airbrushed close-up of a young woman with carefully applied eyeliner and fake eyelashes that somebody spent an hour or two lacquering and separating so they look like heavy fringe, chemically colored hair with extensions teased and gelled and sprayed to mimic the way healthy hair would look if nothing had ever been done to it, and a pouting, seductive mouth plump with collagen shots. We are all supposed to believe that if we only purchase the products advertised in those magazines, we too can look like the cover model, but not even the cover models look like that.

Maurice came back and grabbed a pair of scissors. “Put the magazine down, because I’m going to turn you around so you’re facing me instead of the mirror. You just relax.”

I immediately tensed up, because my experience is that when somebody says, “You just relax,” you’re in for a harrowing time.

Maurice spun me around and began to cut and snip like a wild man, sending pieces of hair flying all over the place. I was so disappointed I could have cried. Sarasota women have two hairstyles: Barbie-doll long and highlighted white blond, or short and chopped off at the nape of the neck. The Barbie-doll do has bangs that hang over the eyebrows, the chopped-off do is frothed up on the crown like meringue. There is no in between.

I stand up for myself against alligators, religious fanatics, and gun-toting madmen, but I am a hopeless coward with hairdressers. I not only thank them for bad haircuts, I pay them and tip them. Then I go home and recut my hair. It’s disgusting to be a hairdresser wimp, but I am. And every time, while I’m in the chair being ruined, I rationalize my cowardice by telling myself that my hair will grow out, that a bad haircut won’t last forever.

Maurice knelt in front of me to get a better angle with his scissors. He had kind eyes.

He said, “I worry about her.”

“Who?”

“Laura. With that awful husband of hers, I think she should hire a bodyguard. But she’s so brave, she just acts like there’s no danger. And then there’s that other man after her. I feel bad that she met him here, but it’s out of my hands, you know? She’s an adult and she can see anybody she wants to.”

Maurice apparently didn’t share my disinclination to gossip about his clients, and I felt a bit let down. Laura had apparently told Maurice everything she’d told me, plus he knew about a man she hadn’t even mentioned. So I wasn’t so special after all. I wondered how many other people knew her story.

He stood up and whirled me around so I could see myself, and I made an involuntary gasp of surprise.

I felt like Julie Christie in the old movie Shampoo. My hair wasn’t any shorter, and I didn’t know exactly what was different, but now it looked as if it needed a man’s fingers running through it.

Maurice smiled. “Now that’s kick-ass hair!”

The front door flew open and a woman built like a manatee came charging in. She had large dark eyes with lots of dramatic makeup, shiny black hair cut close to her head like a skullcap, and she wore lavender Lycra tights under a bright orange smock. She should have looked ridiculous, but she looked oddly exotic.

In a deep baritone, she bawled, “Baby!” and snatched the Chihuahua pup from its basket.

Misty-eyed, Maurice said, “That’s my wife.”

I didn’t know whether he was on the verge of crying because my hair was so gorgeous or because his wife was so . . . so much.

To his wife, Maurice said, “Ruby, sweetie, this is . . . who are you, hon?”

Weakly, I said, “I’m Dixie Hemingway.”

As if he’d invented me, Maurice said, “She’s the one found Baby and brought him back to us.”

With Baby held tight against her jutting bosom, Ruby stuck out a hand twice as big as Maurice’s and gave me a firm handshake.

“You’re a pet sitter, aren’t you? I read about you in the paper. Great haircut.”

I allowed as how I was a pet sitter and that I also thought it was a great haircut, but I didn’t respond to the comment about reading about me in the paper. There were only a few times my name had been mentioned in the paper, and none of them were because of events I wanted to remember.

Maurice said, “She’s a friend of Laura Halston’s.”

Ruby opened her mouth to say something enthusiastic, but she closed it when the front door opened and a thick man stalked in, glowering like he owned the place and had caught the employees goofing off. He was donkey-butt ugly, with a deeply pockmarked face and thorny black eyebrows. When he raised his hand to his shades to remove them, several diamond rings glittered on fingers thick as cheap cigars. Maurice and Ruby got quiet, and the smile Ruby gave him was so false it could have been lifted off and pinned to the wall.

She said, “Sheila will be right with you, Mr. Gorgon.”

He said, “Well, get her up here, I don’t have all day.”

The young woman with the Statue of Liberty hair whipped around the front counter with a smile as phony as Ruby’s. “I’m right here, Mr. Gorgon. You can come on back.”

As he strutted away, I watched him with the repulsed fascination I’d give a nest of baby vipers. Maurice and Ruby seemed equally unable to tear their eyes away from him. Even Baby had cocked his ears and was staring at him with big astonished eyes.

Sheila of the white spiked hair bustled around a manicure stand, getting him seated, making sure he was comfortable, offering him something to drink, putting out her bowls and bottles and tools as if she were getting ready to do major surgery. The man all but sneered at her, but he allowed her to touch his broad hands. They seemed to have something of a practiced routine.

As if we all came out of a trance, Maurice and Ruby and I turned away from them at the same moment.

In a barely audible murmur, Maurice said, “Speak of the devil.”

Brilliantly, I said, “Huh?”

He leaned close and pretended to arrange a hair behind my ear while he whispered, “That’s the man Laura’s seeing!”

Since she’d only lived in Sarasota a few weeks, she couldn’t have seen much of him. Besides, anybody with two brain cells to rub together would know he wasn’t Laura’s type. Then I remembered how she’d talked about how rich her husband was, and how much she’d liked being a rich man’s wife. This guy sporting diamonds on his hammy hands obviously had money. Maybe his money was enough to make Laura overlook his nasty disposition. I gave the man another look. I knew he wasn’t the man who’d called while I was there because his voice was gruff and harsh, not the unctuous smarm of the guy who’d come to Laura’s door.

I thanked Maurice profusely, tried to give him a tip which he refused, and left him and Ruby telling Baby how wonderful he was. I didn’t say goodbye to Sheila. I was afraid it would interfere with her concentration and enrage her manicure customer.

That’s the kind of thing that makes me grateful for my own profession. I don’t have to be a different person at work than I am at home. I don’t have to suck up to people I despise so that little pieces of my soul get chipped away every day.

As I trudged back to the Bronco, I thought how women tend to envy beauties like Laura, but if we’re going to envy anybody, it probably should be women like Ruby. She was a lot happier than Laura, she had a man who loved her whole zaftig self, and she was content with her life. I suspected that Laura’s experience with men was that they all wanted to show her off to other men, like a rare jewel in their possession.

Oddly, I felt sorry for Laura. She probably needed a friend as much as I did. Maybe some of her cool self-esteem would rub off on me, and maybe I could help her feel that she was more than just a lovely face.