As they danced, she went on chattering, and Qwilleran's mind wandered. If this woman was banking her career on David's endorsement, she was in for a surprise. Natalie said she was hunting for a studio, and she had a cousin who was a newspaperman, and she loved smoked oysters, and the balconies at the Villa Verandah were too windy. Qwilleran said he had just moved into an apartment there, but refrained from mentioning whose. He speculated on the chances of sneaking a few tidbits from the buffet for his cat.
"Ooh, do you have a cat?" Natalie squealed. "Does he like lobster?" "He likes anything that's expensive. I think he reads price tags." "Why don't you go and get him? We'll give him some lobster." Qwilleran doubted whether Koko would like the noisy crowd, but he liked to show off his handsome pet, and he went to get him. The cat was half asleep on his refrigerator cushion, and he was the picture of relaxation, sprawled on his back in a position of utter abandon, with one foreleg flung out in space and the other curled around his ears. He looked at Qwilleran upside down with half an inch of pink tongue protruding and an insane gleam in his slanted, half-closed eyes.
"Get up," said Qwilleran, "and quit looking like an idiot. You're going to a soire." By the time Koko arrived at the party, sitting on Qwilleran's shoulder, he had regained his dignity. At his entrance the noise swelled to a crescendo and then stopped altogether. Koko surveyed the scene with regal condescension, like a potentate honoring his subjects with his presence. He blinked not, neither did he move a whisker. His brown points were so artistically contrasted with his light body, his fur was shaded so subtly, and his sapphire eyes had such unadorned elegance that he made David Lyke's guests look gaudily overdressed.
Then the first exclamation broke through the silence, and everyone came forward to stroke the silky fur.
"Why, it feels like ermine!" "I'm going to throw out my mink." Koko tolerated the attention but remained aloof until Natalie spoke to him. He stretched his neck and sniffed her extended finger.
"Ooh, can I hold him?" she asked, and to Qwilleran's surprise Koko went gladly into her arms, snuggling in her woolly stole, sniffing it with serious concentration, and purring audibly.
Cokey pulled Qwilleran away. "It makes me so mad," she said, "when I think of all the trouble I take to stay thin and get my hair straightened and improve my conversation! Then she comes in, babbling and looking frizzy and thirty pounds overweight, and everybody goes for her, including the cat!" Qwilleran experienced a pang of sympathy for Cokey, mixed with something else. "I shouldn't leave Koko here too long, among all these strangers," he said. "It might upset his stomach. Let's take him back to 15-F, and you can have a look at my apartment." "I've brought my nutmeg grater," she said. "Do you happen to have any cream and ginger ale?" Qwilleran retrieved Koko from Natalie's stole, and led Cokey around the long curving corridor to the other wing.
When he threw open the door of his apartment, Cokey paused for one breathless moment on the threshold and then ran into the living room with her arms flung wide. "It's glorious!" she cried.
"Harry Noyton calls it Scandihoovian." "The green chair is Danish, and so is the endwood floor," Cokey told him, "and the dining chairs are Finnish. But the whole apartment is like a designers' Hall of Fame. Bertoia, Wegner, Aalto, Mies, Nakashima! It's too magnificent! I can't bear it!" She collapsed in the cushions of a suede sofa and put her face in her hands.
Qwilleran brought champagne glasses filled with a creamy liquid, and solemnly Cokey ground the nutmeg on the bubbling surface.
"To Co key, my favorite girl," he said, lifting his glass. "Skinny, straight-haired, and articulate!" "Now I feel better," she said, and she kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the shaggy pile of the rug.
Qwilleran lighted his pipe and showed her the new issue of Gracious Abodes with the Allison living room on the cover.
They discussed its challenging shades of red and pink, the buxom ship's figurehead, and the pros and cons of four-poster beds with side curtains.
Koko was sitting on the coffee table with his back turned, pointedly ignoring the conversation. The curve of his tail, with its uplifted tip, was the essence of disdain, but the angle of his ears indicated that he was secretly listening.
"Hello, Koko," said the girl. "Don't you like me?" The cat made no move. There was not even the tremor of a whisker.
"I used to have a beautiful orange cat named Frankie," she told Qwilleran sadly. "I still carry his picture in my handbag." She extracted a wad of cards and snapshots from her wallet and sorted them on the seat of the sofa, then proudly held up a picture of a fuzzy orange blob.
"It's out of focus, and the color has faded, but it's all I have left of Frankie. He lived to be fifteen years old. His parentage was uncertain, but — " "Koko!" shouted Qwilleran. "Get away!" The cat had silently crept up on the sofa, and he was manipulating his long pink tongue.
Qwilleran said, "He was licking that picture." "Oh!" said Cokey, and she snatched up a small glossy photograph of a man. She slipped it into her wallet but not before Qwilleran had caught a glimpse of it. He frowned his displeasure as she went on talking about cats and grinding nutmeg into their cocktails.
"Now, tell me all about your moustache," Cokey said. "I suppose you know it's terribly glamorous." "I raised this crop in Britain during the war," said Qwilleran, "as camouflage." "I like it." It pleased him that she had not said "Which war?" as young women were inclined to do. He said: "To tell the truth, I'm afraid to shave it off. I have a strange feeling that these lip whiskers put me in touch with certain things — like subsurface truths and imminent happenings." "How wonderful!" said Cokey. "Just like cats' whiskers." "I don't usually confide this little fact. I wouldn't want it to get noised around." "I can see your point." "Lately I've been getting hunches about the theft of the Tait jades." "Haven't they found the boy yet?" "You mean the houseboy who allegedly stole the stuff? That's one of my hunches. I don't think he's the thief." Cokey's eyes widened. "Do you have any evidence?" Qwilleran frowned. "That's the trouble; I don't have a thing but these blasted hunches. The houseboy doesn't fit the role, and there's something fishy about the timing, and I have certain reservations about G. Verning Tait. Did you ever hear anything about a scandal in the Tait family?" Cokey shook her head.
"Of course, you were too young when it happened." Cokey looked at her watch. "It's getting late. I should be going home." "One more drink?" Qwilleran suggested. He went to the bar with its vast liquor supply and took the cream and ginger ale from the compact refrigerator.
Cokey began walking around the room and admiring it from every angle. "Everywhere you look there's beautiful line and composition," she said with rapture in her face. "And I love the interplay of textures — velvety, sleek, woolly, shaggy. And this rug! I worship this rug!" She threw herself down on the tumbled pile of the luxurious rug. She lay there in ecstasy with arms flung wide, and Qwilleran combed his moustache violently. She lay there, unaware that the cat was stalking her. With his tail curled down like a fishhook and his body slung low, Koko moved through the shaggy pile of the rug like a wild thing prowling through the underbrush. Then he sprang!
Cokey shrieked and sat up. "He bit me! He bit my head!" Qwilleran rushed to her side. "Did he hurt you?" Cokey ran her fingers through her hair. "No. He didn't actually bite me. He just tried to take a little nip. But he seemed so… hostile! Qwill, why would Koko do a thing like that?"