Cat Under Fire

4

Clyde stood at the living room window watching the cats gallop away toward Ocean Avenue. He had to laugh at Joe's short tail, at his sturdy rear loping up and down in strong, muscular rhythm. Beside him, Dulcie ran as light as a low-flying bird. He watched them worriedly. Their swift departure did not telegraph a casual, "let's go hunt." Crossing Ocean, zigzagging insanely between cars, they nearly made his heart stop.

When they were safely across, into the tree-shaded median, they turned north. Running through the lacy tree shadows, they were headed straight for the hills. And where else would they be going in such a hurry but to Janet's, to the burned remains of her studio. There was nothing else up in that direction to cause this degree of excitement. When they set out together simply to hunt, they stalked along, carefully looking around them, absorbing scents and sounds, working up slowly, he supposed, to the required intensity of concentration. But now they were all fire, scorching away toward the hills like two little rockets.

They'd been up at Janet's before, returning with cinders on their coats and secretive but dissatisfied looks on their sly little faces.

Stepping out onto the porch, he watched them race out of sight, wishing they'd leave this alone.

So what was he going to do, follow them? Fetch them home?

Life had been simpler when Joe was just an ordinary tomcat, when Joe Grey had nothing to say but a demanding meow. When he had nothing on his mind but killing birds and screwing every female cat in Molena Point. Sometimes Clyde longed mightily for those days, when he had at least some control over the gray tomcat.

Now, face it, Joe and Dulcie were no longer little dough-headed beasties to be bossed and subjugated. Nor were they children to be guided and directed toward some faraway future when they could function on their own.

These two were already functioning in what, for them, was an entirely normal manner. The two cats were adult members of their own peculiar race: thinking creatures with free wills-though he didn't dare dwell on the historical convergences that had produced those two devious felines. The power of their heritage clung around the cats, the breath of dead civilizations shadowed them like phantom reflections, darkly. If he let himself think about it, he got shaky. When he dwelled too long on the subject, he experienced unsettling dreams and night sweats.

Whatever the cats' alarming background, the fact was that now he had little jurisdiction over Joe Grey. He could argue with Joe, but he was awed by the tomcat, too, and he was obliged to leave Joe pretty much to his own decisions.

And the tomcat, wallowing in his new powers, had grown far more hardheaded than ever he was before.

Joe Grey's own theory about his sudden new abilities was that the trauma of seeing Samuel Beckwhite murdered had triggered the change. That the shock had stirred his latent condition-much as shock might bring on latent diabetes, or propel a patient with high blood pressure to a stroke.

Whatever the cause, Joe's new persona was unsettling for them both. Clyde had to admit, Joe had had a lot to deal with, a lot to learn. He supposed the tomcat was still getting it sorted out. And as for himself, living with a talking cat demanded all the understanding a man could muster.

Wilma said much the same. That sometimes she wished Dulcie would just go back to her earlier vices of stealing the neighbors' clothes. Wilma had been used to Dulcie slipping in through the neighbors' windows, turning the knobs of their unlocked doors, trotting through neighbors' houses dragging away stockings, bed jackets, silk teddies.

He had known Wilma since he was eight, when she moved next door, a tall beautiful blond who soon was the object of his first pre-adolescent crush. She broke his heart each time she left to return to graduate school. She had not only been his first love, but his friend. She was fun, she was tolerant and good-natured, a gorgeous young woman who knew how to throw a baseball and when to keep her mouth shut.

Wilma was gray-haired now, and wrinkled, but she was still slim, a lithe and active woman. They had remained friends even after she finished her graduate degree, never losing touch, through his failed marriage and through Wilma's career as a parole officer, first in San Francisco, and then in Denver. She had retired, from the Denver office of Federal Probation five years ago. When she returned to Molena Point shortly after, they celebrated her retirement with dinner at the Windborne, lobster and champagne, sitting at a window table looking down the cliffs to the rolling sea.

Now, standing on his porch staring up the street where the cats had disappeared, he realized he was late for work. Maybe he'd go in at noon. How long since he'd given himself a half day off? He didn't have anything special this morning. In memory he could hear Janet saying, "Let the men run it for a day. Why bother with the headache of your own business if you can't play hooky?" She had loved to goad him into taking time off, though it meant that she had to abandon her own heavy schedule of sculpture commissions. Locking her studio, she had acted as if she were playing hooky. They would pick up a picnic basket at the deli and drive down to Otter Point, spend the day walking the sea cliffs, laughing, acting silly, getting sunburned.

He sat down on the steps, cold suddenly, hollow and used up. He saw Janet laughing at him, her blue eyes so alive, saw her standing on the wet black rocks of Otter Point, her pale hair whipping in the wind, saw the waves crashing up. Saw her at a little table at Mindy's, the candlelight sending shifting shadows across her golden hair, across her thin face and bare throat and shoulders in a low-cut summer dress.

He saw her burned studio, saw the fire trucks and police cars crowding the upper street behind the house and the street below.

Saw the tarp covering her body among the smoldering ashes.

They had started dating shortly after she left Kendrick Mahl. She was twenty-seven, slim, blond, with a devilish smile that drew him. They had hiked, gone to movies, gone swimming, spent days at the aquarium, driven up to the city just to go to the zoo. They both liked the outdoors, and Janet loved animals. But there the mutual interests ended. Janet's life lay in the world of art, a world that meant little to him.

He loved her paintings, but he had no interest in the art world, in the tangle of exhibits and awards and reviews, in the gallery gossip that occupied Janet. And she had no use for sports or for cars. She rated cars by how many paintings or how many tons of metal a vehicle could haul. Even though she was an artist, she had no interest in the skill that went into the design and manufacture of a fine Bughatti, an antique Rolls. He had taken her to one car show, and no more. She said she didn't have time to spend her day gawking at machine-made sex symbols. That was the only time they had fought. He didn't know why they had, over such a small thing.

During the months they had gone out she was dating several men, but she was committed to none. After they stopped dating they had dinner now and then, in between several heady romances for each of them. Janet had spent life as eagerly as if joy came in endless supply.

And maybe it did, if you knew how to look for it.

Or maybe, if you spent joy so brazenly, you died early. The thought shamed him. But the sense of waste, the knowledge of a vibrant life gone so suddenly, by someone's deliberate hand, the knowledge that Janet was no longer a part of the world, had left him perplexed, strangely weakened.

The morning of the fire he had waked at five-thirty, hearing sirens screaming. The room was filled with sweeps of red light and with the heavy rumbling of the village's four big fire trucks thundering up toward the hills. He had run for the kitchen to look out the back, had stood at the kitchen window watching the trucks' spiraling red lights sweeping up the hills, had seen the hills ablaze exactly where Janet's house stood, had seen the fire trucks converge, followed by an ambulance. He watched for a moment as the wind-fanned flames spread, licking at the dry hills, leaping toward the scattered houses, fingering roofs and walls. He heard the distant crack of a tree exploding, all this in an instant, and then he ran to the bedroom and pulled on pants and shoes and a sweatshirt.

He had propped the back door open, fearing for the animals, not wanting them to be trapped if the fire spread this far. He didn't know where Joe was. He knew the tomcat hunted up in those hills. He had grabbed a shovel from the carport and was just getting in the car when he saw Joe on the roof of their own house, watching the fire. He had wanted to tell Joe to stay away from the hills. But his motherly admonitions would only enrage the tomcat, goad him to do just the opposite. He had turned away, headed away up into the burning hills toward Janet's.

He had worked all morning in a line of volunteers, cutting breaks to keep the fire from spreading; trying not to think. When at nightfall he returned home, he was filled with despair, unable to stop seeing Janet covered by the police tarp.

He got up from the steps and went back in the house. Maybe he'd go on to work. Snatching up his lab coat, he let the animals in, kneeling to stroke them, giving the old dogs a hug.

But then in the car he didn't turn up Ocean toward the automotive shop; he drove on across the divided street, on through the village. This was Wilma's late day at the library, she didn't go in until one. Maybe she had the coffeepot on; maybe she was baking something. He was possessed by a sudden muzzy domestic craving, a yearning for company, for a warm, safe kitchen and the smells of something good cooking, yearning for the warm security he had known in his childhood.

He stopped at the cleaners and the grocers, the drugstore, took his time with his errands, then headed up San Carlos between the little cafes and galleries, between houses and shops pleasantly mixed, along with inconspicuous motels, all shaded by eucalyptus trees and sprawling oaks. The morning air was cool, smelled of the sea. The sidewalks were busy with people walking to work, jogging, walking their dogs. A few tourists were out, their walk more hesitant as they browsed, their clothes tourist-bright. The locals lived in jeans and faded sweatshirts, or, if business required, in easy, muted sport clothes.

He told himself he hadn't seen Wilma all week, that it would be nice to visit for a few minutes, but, watching for her stone house beneath its steeply peaked roof, he watched more intently the sidewalk in front, looking for a green van and a flash of red hair.

Wilma's niece had arrived from San Francisco three weeks ago, another disenchanted art school graduate who had found that she couldn't make a living at her chosen profession. Charlie had given herself two years to try, he had to hand her that. When she'd finally had enough she launched herself, no holds barred, into a hardheaded new venture.

Charleston Getz was an interesting mix, tall and lean like Wilma, but with big square hands, big joints despite her slim build. She wore no makeup-her redhead's delicate complexion and prominent bone structure didn't seem to require additional coloring. Her red hair, wild as a bird's nest, became her. He couldn't picture Charlie dressed up, had never seen her in anything but jeans.

But she knew how to behave in a nice restaurant. And, more to the point, she knew how to work. The day she arrived in Molena Point she had filed for a business permit and had bought a used van with most of her savings. By the end of the week she'd had business cards printed, had put an ad in the paper, and hired two employees. CHARLIE's FIX-IT, CLEAN-IT was off to a running start, and now three weeks later she had completed two jobs and taken on two more. It was just a small start, but she'd thrown herself wholeheartedly into a viable venture. The village badly needed the kinds of services she was providing.

It took, usually, about two years to get a business off the ground and established, turn it into a paying operation. But he thought Charlie would do fine. She liked the work, liked grubbing around spiffing up other people's houses and property, liked bringing beauty to something dull and faded.

Turning down Wilma's street, his spirits lifted. The van was there, the old green Chevy sitting at the curb. He parked behind it, smiling at the sight of Charlie's Levi-clad legs sticking out from underneath beside six cans of motor oil, a funnel, and a wad of dirty rags. Looked like the van was already giving her trouble. He hoped she wasn't dating him because he was a good mechanic. He swung out of the car, studying her dirty tennis shoes and her bony, bare ankles.