Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

22

I weighed about two tons when I slogged into the downstairs lobby at the Sea Breeze. As I went in, the elevator door opened and Tom Hale’s girlfriend came out. She was mincing along on red high heels and carrying a cardboard box so big she had to peer around its side to look ahead. Since she had her hands full, I turned back to open the door for her.

She stopped and gave me a defiant look. “I know what you’re going to say, but women have to put themselves first. If we don’t, who will?”

“Excuse me?”

“I need a man who can protect me. Look at what happened to that woman over in Fish Hawk Lagoon! Somebody came in her house and killed her in the shower. That could’ve been me, and Tom couldn’t do a thing to stop it.”

I looked from her flaming face to the box in her hands. “Are you saying you’re leaving Tom because a woman you’ve never met got killed?”

“I’m saying a woman needs a man to protect her. Every woman, not just me.”

I said, “That’s pure bullshit. You’re just using that as an excuse to leave Tom.”

“You’re so crazy about him, why don’t you move in with him?”

I considered saying that Tom and I were good friends, but that we had no sexual attraction. Not because Tom was in a wheelchair, but because we just didn’t. I considered saying that Tom deserved a woman who wasn’t shallow and vapid, and that I was glad she was leaving him. But saying those things would have taken more energy than she was worth. Besides, I had become so sane and well-balanced that I no longer leaped to tell idiots they were idiots. Instead, I only said one teensy thing.

I said, “Lady, I sure hope you’ve been spayed. It would be a damn shame for you to reproduce.”

She snorted and pranced out on her red high heels, leaving me wishing I hadn’t regained so much sane self-control. A year ago, I might have gone bananas and pulled out all her flat-ironed hair. As it was, I had let the bitch walk away with all her hairs intact.

Upstairs, I tapped on Tom’s condo door and then used my key. He and Billy Elliot were in the living room, and they both gave me doleful looks when I went in.

I said, “Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t tell me you’re actually sad the bitch has gone! Puh-leeze!”

They both looked startled, but Billy Elliot began to grin with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

Tom said, “When your husband was alive, did you feel safer?”

“Of course.”

“You thought he could protect you.”

“It wasn’t that I thought he would protect me, it was just that there were two of us. Even if we were miles apart, there were still two of us, and I always knew if I got in a jam, I could call Todd and he would help me. That made me feel safer.”

“Frannie couldn’t rely on me like that.”

“How come?”

He looked down at his paralyzed legs. “You know.”

“Oh, big doo-doo! She could rely on you for lots of things. You solve problems for people every day. You know things, you have information, you know how to get things done. Women don’t need a bodyguard, they need somebody with good sense to help them solve problems. Frannie’s a poisonous toad. Just get over it.”

Peering up at me with narrowed eyes, Tom gnawed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. Then he grinned.

“I just remembered a movie I saw one time where this guy rubbed a lamp and got a genie that fulfilled his every wish. He wanted a pile of money, boom, he had unlimited supplies. He wanted a fancy hotel suite, boom, he was in it. He wanted two or three women, boom, they were there. He wanted drugs and booze and every kind of sex he could think of, boom, he got it all. Anything he wanted, he got. Man, he was beside himself. He’d found nirvana, heaven, the Garden of Eden. Then after a while it started to get old, you know? And he thought he’d leave for a while and spend some time alone. But he couldn’t. He was locked in that room with those sluts and the drugs and the booze and the unlimited supply of money. And he realized he was in hell.”

“Your point being?”

“At first I thought Frannie was the answer to my dreams. Sexy, good-looking, great in bed, everything a man wants. But for the last few weeks I’ve been in hell.”

“Well, there you go.”

“I guess the moral is to be careful what you ask for.”

I patted his shoulder. “If I meet a genie, I’ll remember that.”

I was already reviewing my list of women who were better than Frannie. I figured I’d give Tom a few weeks to get over her, and then play matchmaker.

Billy Elliot and I went downstairs and did our run, and both of us felt happier when we came back upstairs. Tom seemed to have recovered his equilibrium too.

He said, “Speaking of the woman who was murdered, what’s going on with that?”

Apparently, he and Frannie had done a lot of speaking about Laura’s murder, because I hadn’t mentioned it.

I said, “I don’t think I told you that I’d had dinner with her. I really liked her. I thought we would become good friends.”

“I didn’t realize this was a personal loss for you.”

“It turns out she lied to me about a lot of things. I thought she was one kind of person, but she turned out to be something else.”

“Like Frannie.”

“In a way.”

“Disillusionment sucks, doesn’t it?”

“It looks like Laura hurt some people.”

“Including you.”

“She didn’t hurt me. I barely knew her.”

“Uh-huh, and I still have two good legs, and nobody ever broke my heart and left me.”

A slight sea breeze moved in to wave palm fronds as I left Tom’s place, and my disposition lightened. Funny how the weather seems to have an organic connection to humans and animals. A drop in pressure brings aching joints and pain in old injuries, spring’s explosion of new green stirs a surge of adolescent hormones, and winter’s snow makes people pack up and move to Florida.

I had to spend extra time on my afternoon rounds on account of a recent magazine-shredding binge by twin-mitted Ragdolls named Annie and Bess. Ragdolls are large long-haired cats who fall limp in your arms when you pick them up. Then they look up at you with such a sweet expression in their deep blue eyes that you’re instantly a goner. Annie and Bess were blue colorpoints with white chins, mittens, and boots. They were loving and gentle, but they knew they were the mistresses of the manor and that I was their servant, so they weren’t the least apologetic about flinging paper dandruff all over the house. They watched with bored disinterest while I vacuumed it up, and when I suggested that it might have been a better use of their time to watch the birds outside their window than to tear up a magazine, they merely flipped their tails. In their former lives, they had probably been opera divas.

After they had eaten and I had washed their dishes and put out fresh water, we ran around on the lanai for a few minutes playing jump-for-the-peacock-feather until we were all winded. Then I took them inside, kissed them goodbye, and headed to the Village to get Cora’s muumuu. Not that she needed the dress right that minute, but I didn’t like to think of her by herself, hobbling around on that sore ankle. I didn’t even look across the street toward Ethan’s office when I got it. Well, I may have let my eyes slide that direction, but I didn’t really look.

With the newly shortened dress in a nice shopping bag, I drove over the north bridge and wound my way around to Bayfront Village. I left the Bronco under the portico for a valet to disappear into the bowels of their parking garage, and swished through doors that automatically opened when they felt me coming. As I went toward the elevator, the concierge waved at me, friendly again, and pointed to her phone, meaning she had already notified Cora that I was on the way. I waved back and hustled on to the elevator.

As soon as the elevator door opened on the sixth floor, I could smell chocolate bread from Cora’s apartment. Cora had opened her door for me, and when I went in the look of joy on her face was enough to make me forget how rushed I was.

She said, “I figured you’d be here this afternoon, so I made us some chocolate bread.”

Cora has an ancient bread-making machine her granddaughter gave her, and she makes decadently delicious chocolate bread in it. She claims her technique is a secret, which is okay by me. The secret results in a round whole-wheat loaf studded with almost-melted spots of oozing dark chocolate. Just smelling it makes my taste buds sit up and smile.

I put the bag with her muumuu on a chair.

“I thought you were supposed to sit with your foot propped up.”

“Oh, I do, every chance I get. I’ll sit right now, and you can bring me some bread and tea.”

She plopped herself in one of the graceful iron chairs at a little round table covered with a pink and turquoise tablecloth.

She said, “Would you mind boiling me an egg? I used up all my zip making that bread.”

I said, “I’ll boil two. You should have more protein than one.”

She watched me over the bar while I clattered around finding everything. I boil eggs the way my grandmother taught me and Michael—cold water almost but not quite covering the eggs, cover the pot, bring them to a rolling boil, then turn off the heat and let them sit exactly three minutes. While that was happening, I made a pot of tea, tore off chunks of chocolate bread from the loaf—because it’s best torn, not sliced—and put it all on a tray. When the timer announced the eggs done, I took them out of the water, ruthlessly guillotined them through their shells, and scooped their quivering flesh into a small bowl before the soft yolks had time to run.

When I carried the tray to the table, Cora’s eyes lit up in a way that made me suspect she hadn’t eaten since she’d been home. For a few minutes, the only sound was the clink of Cora’s fork and my soft whimpers of pleasure. Cora’s chocolate bread is another thing I expect to be in unlimited supply in heaven, along with bacon.

She said, “Have you heard anything else about that little boy?”

“He’s doing well, they’ve moved him to a room.”

As if I’d said the opposite, she said, “I don’t worry about dying, you know. To tell the truth, I sort of look forward to it. Not the last-breath part, but the next breath in a new place. I imagine it’s sort of like being born, don’t you? I mean, coming into this world is no picnic for a baby, all that squeezing and pushing going on around it, but then it pops out in a whole new world.”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice, as if somebody else was with us and she didn’t want to be overheard saying something controversial. “Between you and me, I never have believed that business about golden streets and angels flying around playing on harps. That would get old real fast. No, I imagine when we die here, the next thing we know we’re popping out of our next mother, babies again, starting all over.”

“Reincarnation.”

She looked blank. “I don’t know about that. I just think the good Lord gives us another chance to get it right. I’m gonna do better next time.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “You’ve done just fine this time, Cora. I don’t know anybody who’s done it better.”

To stop all the talk about death, I said, “I’m going to a party Saturday night. A big shindig the Humane Society is throwing. Guidry invited me.”

She sat up straight and beamed at me. “That nice detective fellow?”

“That’s the one.”

“That’s why you got your hair cut.”

I touched my ends. “You could tell?”

“It was a little uneven before.”

“That’s not why I got it cut.”

She waggled a hunk of chocolate bread at me. “Yes, it is. You wanted to look pretty for that nice detective. Did you get a new dress?”

“New dress, new shoes, new purse, new underwear, the works.”

She smiled at me, her papery skin cracking into a zillion fine lines. “Ha! It’s about time. That’s all I can say. It’s about time.”

Everybody who loved me seemed to be pushing for me to get involved with a man. Michael hoped it wouldn’t be Guidry, Paco hoped it would be, and Cora would have been happy with either Guidry or Ethan Crane. It made me feel a little bit like a filly on the track that people were betting on. Only thing was, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the race.