The cafe was nearly empty. There were only three customers, a young couple in the corner holding hands across the table like a couple in some fifties movie, and an elderly man in a dark suit, salt-and-pepper hair below his collar, sitting at the bar drinking espresso. He glanced at her without interest. She could see Binnie in the back, his dark, sleekly oiled hair, his long, solemn face above his white apron. He and the busboy were washing dishes.
She glanced through at them and waved, and picked up the phone; Binnie gave her a casual wave in return, nodding and smiling. Binnie’s clock, behind the bar, said twelve-thirty.
She prayed Clyde would answer. Then she hoped he wouldn’t. What was she going to say? Come get me because I can’t go home? Take care of me because I have no home anymore and no money? Because I am a cat now, and have abandoned all human dignity?
The phone rang and rang.
Thank God he wasn’t home. Oh, Clyde, please be home.
Maybe he had company, maybe he was not alone.
She had started to hang up when he answered. She clutched the phone. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to explain. It occurred to her that she could have walked down to his place, it wasn’t that far. She felt as if, any minute, she was going to start bawling.
17 [????????: pic_18.jpg]
In the mist, the village was silent except for the muffled footfalls of the two men. Jimmie Osborne’s oxfords pounded up the sidewalk but Wark’s pace in his jogging shoes was almost silent; his soft walk made Joe’s skin crawl. Following them, the cats drew closer, though Dulcie had restrained herself from launching in a clawed leap onto Wark’s back. She moved quickly beside Joe, staying close to the shops where the fog was most concealing. Their quarry moved fast, jingling car keys.
The sour smell of liquor and cigarette smoke that clung to the men, absorbed while they sat in Donnie’s bar, left a heavy trail behind them. Wark’s voice was so soft the cats had to strain to hear. They caught a few indecipherable words, then Wark said, “No one’ll link us to that.”
“And the wrench?” Osborne said.
“It’ll be found at the proper time. Don’t fret.”
When Wark turned to look at Jimmie, his head in profile seemed unusually narrow; his nose protruded boldly.“Quit worrying don’t always be worryin’.”
His low voice insinuated itself with an intimate penetration that made Joe shiver unpleasantly.
“You’re sure Damen’s prints are still on it?”
Wark’s lilt sharpened with irritation. “They be on it. Quit fussin’. One phone call, the cops have the wrench and Damen’s prints all over it.”
“But all that handling, swinging it around while you chased the damned cat.”
“Still had t’gloves on. Might be smearing it some, but it be full of prints, had t’ be with Clyde using it every day. Back off, man. You be nervous as a cat your ownself.”
“It’s the damned cats that have me on edge. I didn’t count on this when we? ” He turned to look at Wark. “Where did the unnatural things come from? How do you think that makes me feel, my own wife? Did you take care of that?”
“I be workin’ on it.”
“You’ve had more than a week. You caught her once. Why didn’t you? Now, who knows where she is?” He stopped to stare at Wark. “You’re afraid of the damn things.”
Dulcie had stopped, startled. She pressed against Joe’s ear. “What’s he talking about? What does he mean, about his wife?”
Joe thought about Kate Osborne, about her golden eyes that were not exactly like human eyes. He thought about the way she sometimes seemed to slip away within herself, dreaming-perhaps as a cat dreams private and delicious imaginings. He thought about Kate’s catlike grace, about her easy, agile movements.
He thought about the time, when the two couples were in the backyard barbecuing, and he had trotted into the kitchen and found Kate alone, chewing on a raw steak bone. Clyde always cut the T-bone out before he grilled, he said you could plump up the meat better.
When Kate turned and saw him, her eyes widened. She had a speck of red meat on her cheek. She laid the bone down, embarrassed; then she seemed to laugh at herself. She knelt and picked him up, and tore off a morsel of the raw meat, offering it to him.“Hey, Joe Cat. What do you care what I eat?”
She put him down, and gave him another piece of steak. She left the raw bone on the paper wrapper on the counter, picked up her drink, and went back outside where the barbecue was smoking up the neighborhood.
Now, following the two men, he was quiet for so long that Dulcie said,“What? What are you thinking? Could Kate be? But that’s impossible.”
He thought about the rude way Jimmie treated cats and tried to avoid them. And about the rude, patronizing way he treated Kate.
This was incredible. Was he imagining this? Was he putting the wrong spin on the men’s conversation?
Dulcie watched him with huge eyes, letting him work it out.
When he tried to imagine Kate Osborne as a cat, it wasn’t hard to do. She would be a pale, voluptuous cat with golden eyes, very clean. He glanced at Dulcie and grinned. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe Kate is like us.”
“I don’t understand. How could she be? What-what would that make us? What??” She let her words trail off, her eyes huge.
“I don’t know, Dulcie.” A shock of fear had gripped him. He didn’t like this. He’d just gotten used to a cataclysmic change in his life. He wasn’t ready for anything more, not for the implications generated by this conversation.
But they had missed something up ahead; Jimmie had grabbed Wark by the shoulders.
“What did you tell her? What does she know?”
“Why would I be tellingheranything?” Wark shrugged Jimmie’s hands away, mumbling something they couldn’t hear.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” Jimmie growled. “That’s why she ran away, she knows I want her dead. Well, you’d better do her, Wark. And soon. I don’t like her roaming around loose. I wake up at night sweating. It’s a nightmare that couldn’t happen. I want it to stop happening.
“I wake up thinking it can’t be happening, then I remember that cat you changed and killed. I remember how that cat looked.” Jimmie shook Wark hard. “You’d better do her the same. And you’d better do those other two.”
“Get your mind off t’ cats. I be taking care of the cats.”
“You haven’t so far.”
“I said, don’t fret. I be doing it. And soon we be out of here, lapping up rum and playing with the girls, in Boca.” Wark laughed. “But business first. We tend first to the job at hand. We’ve a long drive t’night. Might be we could tow one car, but I don’t like?”
“Sheril’s driving. I told you. It’s not my fault your man got sick. Christ, he might have changed the VIN plate before he took off on you. I don’t like doing that in the shop yard.”
“We be back before daylight. T’ tools all be there, only take a minute.”
The two men stopped beside Jimmie’s silver Bugatti; it waited low and sleek and bright, reeking of money. Joe had listened a dozen times to Jimmie’s recitation of how fast the Bugatti was, how it could do over three hundred, and how much it would have cost if he hadn’t got such a deal. Sure he got a deal. Five hundred thousand bucks worth of car, and Jimmie gave Kate the story that he got it cheap in a trade. He told Kate the Bugatti was a tax writeoff, good advertising for the agency. Joe wondered how much Kate swallowed of that. Clyde said a hired salesman would play hell trying to take a writeoff like that.
Jimmie said,“You better ditch the key, in case of trouble tonight.”
“There won’t be no trouble. Unless Sheril be messing us up. And who would know-innocent little brass key.”
As Jimmie opened the driver’s door and the interior light came on, the cats drew back behind a planter, jamming their rumps against a shop wall. Jimmie’s face, lit by the low interior glow, appeared transformed, and not in a pleasant way. He slid into the low, sleek car. “Let’s get rolling, pick up Sheril, or we won’t be back before daylight.” He stroked the pearly leather interior, and softly shut the door. In a second the Bugatti’s engine came to life, a soft and powerful purr like a giant, sleek silver cat.