Just then, Brutus drew me aside, leaving Harriet to a further inspection of every square inch of her fur and Dooley to stare up at the sky, waiting for the end to come.
“Max,” he said, lowering his voice.
“Look,” I said. “Kingman may be a lot of things, but he’s not a critter expert, all right? So don’t you believe a word that cat says. Kingman is what you might call an alarmist.”
He waved an impatient paw.“Screw Kingman,” he said to my surprise. He looked agitated, and for the first time I wondered if his agitation stemmed from something other than the flea infestation. “I need to ask you a question and I need you to listen carefully.”
“Sure. Shoot,” I said.
“Max,” he repeated, and stopped, chewing his lip.
“Uh-huh?”
He cleared his throat.“It’s like this, Max…” He stared at me.
“Yes?” I said encouragingly.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his paw.“Christ, this is hard.”
Now he was starting to worry me.“Just tell me already, will you?”
He fixed me with a stare from between his claws.“Right. Look, you gotta promise me not to tell a soul, okay?”
“I promise.”
He held up his little claw.“Pinkie promise?”
I held up my little claw and hooked it behind his.“Pinkie promise.”
The suspense was killing me. What could be so important? Soon he’d scratch my paw and have me press it against his in a blood oath or something similarly ridiculous.
“I’m having issues, Max,” he finally said.
“Issues?”
“Down there,” he said, pointing at his tail.
“You’ve got tail issues?”
“Not tail issues. Pee-pee issues.”
“You can’t pee? You should see a urologist.”
“I can pee just fine!” he growled. “It’s the other thing that doesn’t work.”
I stared at him.“What other thing?”
He gave me an intense look.
And then I got it. Theother thing.
“Oh. Oh!”
“Uh-huh.”
“You mean…”
He nodded seriously.“It just doesn’t work like it used to, Max. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“And I’m supposed to know?”
He gave me a hopeful look.“You’re a smart cat, Max. Everybody knows that. You’ve been around the block once or twice or maybe even three times. Help me out, will you?”
He said it with such a pleading expression on his face that my heart melted.“Fine,” I said finally. “All right. I will help you.” Though for the life of me I had no idea how.
“Harriet is very unhappy,” he continued. “You know she likes it rough, right?”
I pressed my paws to my ears. This I did not need to hear.“Too much information, Brutus,” I said. “Just tell me what’s wrong and maybe we can try and fix it.”
“Well,” he said, frowning, “it used to work just fine, and now it doesn’t.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t?”
He shrugged.“The little bugger refuses to show his face.”
“Maybe it’s Harriet. Maybe you don’t like her the way you used to.”
“Oh, I like Harriet fine. She’s the one for me, Max. No doubt about it.”
I thought about this for a moment.“It could be a physical thing. Do you get your morning, you know, um, your morning stiffness in that general, um, area?”
He smiled proudly.“Hard as a rock, Doc.”
I grimaced.“Please don’t call me ‘Doc.’ I am not a licensed physician.”
I suddenly noticed he’d dropped down on his butt and was sticking out a certain part of his anatomy and glancing at me invitingly.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Aren’t you going to inspect me?”
In Harriet’s words: eww! “No, I am not going to inspect you.”
“But how else are you going to know what’s wrong down there?”
“You know what, Brutus? I think we better leave this to Vena.”
“No!” he cried, then lowered his voice when Harriet and Dooley glanced over. “No can do, Doc. Vena will tell Odelia and Odelia will tell everyone else and Harriet will find out and…” He closed his eyes. “When Harriet finds out my life is officially over, all right?”
“But why? If she loves you—”
He opened his eyes and hissed,“Harriet loves the butch Brutus. The he-cat. Brutus the brute. She doesn’t love the sissy cat who can’t get his machinery to work as it should.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short, Brutus. These are new and exciting times. These days lady cats love a tomcat who shows his feelings—who’s not afraid to open his heart. To lay it all out there for everyone to see. It’s the millennial cat they want. The soft cat. The cat who dares to cry in front of his lady cat. Shed a few tears and admit that we’re all feline.”
A strange sound attracted our attention. When we turned in the direction of the sound we discovered that Dooley was softly weeping, tears trickling down his furry face.
“Oh, stop crying, Dooley,” Harriet said gruffly. “Are you a man or a mouse? Have you seen Brutus cry? No, you haven’t. Because my Brutus is a real cat. A cat’s cat. A cat who wouldn’t be seen DEAD crying like a sniveling whiny little crybaby.” She directed a loving look at Brutus. “Tough as nails he is,” she added proudly. “And that’s what I love about him.”
Brutus slowly turned back to me and raised a single whisker.
I nodded.“You’re in a heap of trouble, my friend,” I said.
“I told you, Doc. If you don’t fix my plumbing I’m a dead cat.”
Chapter 6
Grandma Muffin came walking up to the small gathering in front of the hotel, shaking her fist and crying,“Where is he? Where is my lover? Don’t tell me he’s dead!”
Odelia and Chase shared a look of confusion.“Her lover?” asked Chase.
“She’s finally lost her final marble,” said Uncle Alec. He stepped forward. “Ma. What the hell do you think you’re doing, making a spectacle of yourself like that?”
The old lady stood her ground.“I’ve come here to meet my lover. Where are you hiding him?”
Alec gave her a weary look.“And who would this lover of yours be?”
“Why Burt Goldsmith, of course. Most Fascinating Man in the World.”
“Ma, Burt Goldsmith is not your lover.”
She waved that fist again.“Watch your tone, son. Burt Goldsmith was my lover long before you were born.”
A look of confusion stole over Alec’s face. “Long before I was born?”
“Sure! Each time he came to town we went at it like rabbits! Burt was my lover in the swinging sixties! The time of anything goes. Not like nowadays, when people clench their butt cheeks each time someone mentions the word sex.” She glanced around at the gathering crowd. “Sex!” she cried. “See how they cringe? Sex! That’s right—I like sex!”
“Ma!” Alec growled, and took a firm grip on her arm and led her away and into the hotel vestibule. Odelia and Chase followed, and so did Philippe Goldsmith, who seemed to have developed an odd and rapturous fascination with the old lady all of a sudden.
Inside the hotel, Alec pushed his mother down on one of the plush sofas and towered over her. Not that it intimidated the old lady one bit. Vesta Muffin was a tough old broad, and in spite of the fact that she was rail-thin and the spitting image of Estelle Getty, with her close-cropped white hair and large glasses, she was afraid of no one—not even her son the big police chief. She pointed a bony finger in his face. “I demand to see my lover!”
“Your lover is dead,” Uncle Alec said before he could stop himself.
She gasped—a quick intake of breath. “Dead?”
“Yeah, he was killed this morning.”
Her face turned into a scowl.“You killed him, didn’t you?”