"More like a 'New Knives' Tale.' Or 'Tail' as in attached to the rear end of an animal."
"Not Louie's end?"
"Indeed. And almost unattached."
"Oh, dear." Kit peered intently around the kitchen wall to inspect Louie's extremities. "He looks all there. Oh. He hasn't lost something invisible? Did you have him fixed? "
"I didn't have to." Temple explained how the cat was kidnapped by an enraged Savannah Ashleigh, certain that Louie was the Unfortunate part of the Condition that afflicted her purebred Persian, Yvette.
Kit was scurrying back on her velvet holiday mules to see Temple's full performance as the infuriated aging starlet playing Cruella de Vil.
"And furthermore, she told the finest plastic surgeon in Las Vegas,' and she oughta know, "I want this beast fixed so that he will never leopardize a female cat's breeding potential again!"
"She ought to have been thinking of a jaguar. She abducted your cat just to have him neutered? Without your knowledge and against your will? Incredible. And she took Louie to a plastic surgeon?"
"I'm afraid Savannah was running on her Energizer bunny batteries again, instead of the usual brain power. Actually, it turned out fine. The dazed doctor performed a vasectomy on Louie. That was the only 'neutering' procedure he knew anything about. And he threw in a free tummy tuck."
"Oooh!" Kit's eyes momentarily turned envy-green as she admired the lounging ex-tomcat. "You couldn't get me an appointment for something similar? I don't need surgical contraception at my age, but I sure could use all the tucking I can get."
"You look trim as a paper cutter, Auntie dear, act twice as sharp and look half your age."
Kit almost purred in time with Louie. "Children are so sweet. . . when they're all grown up. And if you expect me to confess my age after all that buttering up, forget it, Niece."
"I wouldn't dream of asking. Besides, my mother is sixty-seven or -eight, so--"
"Never mind. I can tell you that I was a wisp of forty-nine not nearly as long ago as it seems. What a demented bimbo!" Kit had returned to the subject of Savannah Ashleigh. "How anyone would let that attempt to act is the biggest mystery of all."
"No, the biggest mystery about Savannah Ashleigh is what she'll do when she finds out what I did."
"And that is?"
Temple coddled the brandy snifter in both her hands, as if warming them at a private fire. "I filed suit against her. In small-claims court."
"In Las Vegas?"
"That's where the crime took place."
"But... isn't there an anti-roaming cat law there? Wouldn't Louie be in the wrong just for being available for catnapping?"
"The issue is the willful alteration of a cat she knew was not hers. And, besides, Louie was wrongfully accused of parenthood."
"He didn't do the wild thing with the nubile Yvette?"
"Not long enough to produce four yellow-striped offspring. I understand that kitty litters can result from more than one tomcat, but a black sire would always produce at least one black cat."
"Who do we know that is yellow-striped?"
Temple allowed a smug expression on her face as she stroked Louie's satin-furred ears. "Maurice."
"Maurice? Chevalier is dead. I think. Yvette's name is the right nationality to appeal, but the species is wrong, even for a Frenchman."
"Haven't you seen those Yummy Turn-turn-tummy ads on TV? The big yellow cat that comes running?"
"Not often. Oh. That's Maurice? The British pronounce it 'Morris,' you know."
"Well, over here we pronounce it 'Maurice,' as in Father of the Pride:'
"Then that's the cat that Louie bounced to get the commercial job that's brought you both to New York to visit the ad agency? I'd say Yvette's indiscretion was lucky for all concerned."
"I sure hope so. This has come up so fast I haven't had time to consider if a show-business career is the best thing for Louie and me. I'd have to be away from home, traveling, and Louie's no lightweight."
"But he's obviously star material. Look at him lolling on black leather as if to the limo born! You can't deny the thespian talent. Louie deserves his time in the spotlight."
Chapter 6
Phantom of the Wedding Chapel
Just because it seemed so perversely inappropriate, Matt played the theme from The Phantom of the Opera on the small Hammond organ.
At three in the morning five days before Christmas, the Lover's Knot wedding chapel was deserted except for the attentive, softsculpture presence of its constant "congregation." Not that the Christmas holidays weren't a popular time to get married; they were. So popular that Electra had to schedule weddings for the holiday period and used her new drive -by service for the overflow.
Like Santa, she'd taken on a few seasonal "elves" to help with the nuptial overload, and had even inked in time off for herself.
Oddly, Matt had never cared much for performing weddings. Despite the picture -perfect look to the grand day, behind-the-scenes involvement revealed all the familial cracks in the united front produced as lavishly as a Broadway show for one day of pomp and
circumstance.
The high cost of contemporary weddings, even modest ones, only upped the stakes.
Beyond the in-law tensions, the money squeeze and open warfare over who should pay for what, beyond tiffs about who was in the wedding party, the bridesmaids' dresses, the music or the flowers, Matt most hated the hypocrisy so common nowadays.
The Charade, he called it privately and contemptuously. This was the prewedding dissolution of a common household, when bride and groom who had been cohabiting, as the sociologists called it, for months, or even years, established separate addresses for the few weeks before the wedding . . . before they showed up at the rectory, parents in tow, to discuss the ceremonial details.
Matt was supposed to counsel them, ignoring the unspoken awkwardness of the true situation. He was supposed to publicly endorse a fruitful union, and privately assume that of course they would not resort to artificial means of contraception . . . when they had been using such means for months, or years. Now, though, in his office, they would be born-again virgins, presumed innocent of unworldly ways, baptized in the church's desperate desire to pretend that mores were what they had used to be.
Older priests, proud to be known as die-hard conservatives, used the prenuptial period as an opportunity to thunder like Moses come down from his mountain with his shalt-nots carved in stone: "You will," the priests would force eager-to-wed couples to agree, "be open to all the children that God gives you."
Obviously, they had not been open to possible children while living together, and would not gladly accept the possible nine or twelve now, not with college costs sky-high, and women planning on careers. But they pretended conformity, needing the communal blessing. Words were as crooked as runes, begging interpretation. "As God gives us (despite contraception)."
So everyone on both sides of the unspoken equation lied to each other, or to themselves.
Matt didn't blame the couples or the families. They believed in the vows and the sacrament. They also believed in the ideal of a lasting marriage, so much so that "trial runs" had become almost universal.
He just hated to see marriages launched so dishonestly. In prenuptial conferences, he avoided flat pronouncements, Instead encouraging the couple to be mature, considerate, aware of the seriousness of a lifetime commitment.
And Matt had to admit that twenty-something couples who had lived together (as everybody in the parish knew) were better prepared for the realities of life together than the old-model ignorant teenage lovers rushing to the altar to formalize their untried mutual infatuation.