Now if he had been Greg, and seen the want in her eyes, he would have swept her up so fast
.
As she left the room, she surprised Ingrid in the hallway, eavesdropping. If there was a scent of romance about, Ingrid would catch it. She was an incorrigible romantic, almost a paradox in an age when novels and movies and television shows emphasized the sordid in the name of realism.
“Ingrid!” she said sharply. “How many times have I told you “
“I didn’t hear anything. Nothing at all.”
She continued to Ingrid’s bedroom to change clothes. “You heard nothing because there was nothing, but if there had been something, you would have written it down verbatim in that locked-up diary. I don’t care what secrets of yours you write down, but I don’t want any of mine showing up in court five years from now.”
Ingrid flopped on the bed while Patti changed. “Tommy asked me today. He was adorable. I like men who are adorable, don’t you, sis? He asked if I was going to the dance, and I said I hoped so, and he asked who was taking me, and I said Eddie had called up but Eddie wasn’t my type, and Tommy asked if he was my type, I mean and I told him I’d be ready at eight. So if it’s all right with you, I’ll tell Eddie you said I couldn’t go with him. Please, just this one time. I won’t ask you again.”
“Why won’t I let you go with him?”
“Because you don’t know Eddie and Tommy’s an old friend of yours.”
“He is?”
“You met him at the Cal game, remember?”
“Oh, the one with the big ears.”
Ingrid thought deeply for a moment. “Maybe you baby-sat with him and he’s just like your own boy.”
“Now wait a minute, Inky. Do you think Mother would okay this?”
“I was afraid you’d bring that up.”
“I’d like to help you. You know that. Only we all have to make our own decisions and live with them. Why don’t you tell Eddie you’re sorry, you like him a lot and admire him as a student, but you two have different interests, see things differently, and dating just wouldn’t work out.”
“I’ve got to grow up, huh?”
“It’s rough, I know.”
“Okay.” She rolled over on her back, stared at the ceiling, breathed heavily, and sighed.
Much later, as Patti was applying nail polish to halt a run in her nylons, Ingrid said quietly, “You know what, sis? He’s never broken the girl barrier.”
“Who’s never done what?”
“Mr. Kelso. He’s never broken the girl barrier. You know, it’s like the sound barrier. A boy’s got to want to break it, because if he doesn’t he’s dead. There’s this boy at school some of us girls come down the hall and he ducks into a classroom.”
“I wouldn’t wonder,” Patti remarked.
Inky grew confidential. “I wouldn’t marry a fellow like that. He’d be the kind who’d gulp down his dinner and get out of the house fast to go bowling. His biological urge is too weak.”
“Inky!”
“That’s the trouble. You don’t face the facts. A boy’s no good as a husband if he doesn’t have it. And I’m not being shocking. I’m only recognizing facts which you older people never do, and look at all the divorces and broken homes.”
Patti said with finality, “I’m not marrying him or your beloved Greg. So close your mouth, pull in your tongue, and get the body into the kitchen.”
“In that order?”
23
By seven o’clock the fact became apparent that Patti had inaccurately translated D.C.‘s intentions. He was sound asleep and no prodding could stir him. She talked with him, rubbed his ears, and even pulled the drapes aside so he could see that dusk was moving in. He gave her a scathing glance and rolled over, turning his back on her.
“It’s no use,” she said in the half-dark room. “He’s not going out.”
“He’s got to,” Zeke answered, standing close to her, staring at the cat. His arm brushed hers, and once again she was acutely conscious of the intimacy of the moment. She shrugged the feeling away. Still angry with Greg, she realized she might be experiencing an emotional recoil. And yet Zeke meshed so well with whatever she thought and did. It was as if he always had been a part of her life and this house. He was the most restful man she had ever been around.
Zeke crossed to the radio, picked up the microphone, and said, ” Operations Center , Operations Center . Informant sound asleep. No indication he will awaken in the immediate future. Suggest you activate Plan A.”
Plan A was put into effect thirty minutes later with the arrival of Dr. Jason Faulkner, a noted Beverly Hills feline psychiatrist. Although Zeke considered the calling of Dr. Faulkner ridiculous, Supervisor Newton had recommended it in case D.C. failed to make his rounds. The Bureau operated on the policy that no possibility should be overlooked in an investigation, no matter how fantastic or slight the chance of its success. When a life or the apprehension of dangerous fugitives were at stake, no avenue could be ignored.
Dr. Faulkner was a tall, graying individual with a professor’s manner. His clients included many famous movie stars and other wealthy people who attested to his skill in analyzing their cats’ neuroses and, in a high percentage of cases, eliminating them. He was one of four psychiatrists in Beverly Hills specializing in cats and dogs.
“I seldom have a cat of uncertain ancestry,” he told Zeke. “Most of my patients are Siamese, Manx the better families.”
Zeke glanced up sharply to determine if the doctor were being facetious but he was quite serious. Only Beverly Hills , Zeke thought, could develop and bring to such a high degree of perfection such an unusual head shrinker.
The doctor conducted a cursory examination of D.C., which elicited a warning growl and finally a laying back of the ears. Dr. Faulkner asked numerous questions of Patti and Ingrid regarding D.C.‘s habits. “I need to know,” he explained, “so that I may reach a proper evaluation and adjudication of the problem that is to say, in order to reconcile the inner person with the outer person.”
Zeke stopped his flow of thought. “I don’t care about his inner person. We just want to get the outer one moving.”
Pointedly, Dr. Faulkner ignored him. The doctor held a high disdain for persons totally ignorant of the aims and methods of modern psychiatry. “I must know the emotional climate.” He looked straight at Zeke. “He may be suffering from an anti-authority attitude buried deep in the subconscious and ridden with anxieties. Deeply depressed.”
D.C. looked up as if to say, Who, me? Why, you old fool. Give me a dog to chase and I’ll show you how depressed I am.
Mike said from the doorway, “He’s anti-authority all right. Always has been.”
Zeke was growing weary of this nonsense. “Don’t all cats suffer from that, doctor?”
“Only when they feel the inner resentment of humans.”
Mike said, indicating Zeke, “Must be him. We all love him, don’t we, you old ham.” He shook D.C.‘s flabby stomach, and D.C. kicked with all four paws. They were always getting personal. How would they like it if he shook their gelatinous parts?
“I love him, too,” Zeke said, rubbing his puffed eyes with his fists. He had to get out of the room, and soon. He was going blind. If the blasted cat would only get his big fat carcass into the outdoors, the allergy would recede.
Zeke admitted that he had been rather demanding. In fact, the things he had required of D.C. might, from a cat’s point of view, amount to indignities.
The doctor said a-a-h, as though the meaning of the universe had just been unfolded to him. Finally, he ventured, “My preliminary observation would indicate he is not a psychotic masochist.”
Mike asked, “Isn’t that a dirty word?” In the same instant, Patti said with faint sarcasm, “I’m glad to hear that. Be terrible if we had a what-you-call-it on our hands.”
From the beginning she had been hurt that anyone would want to psychoanalyze D.C. since it was obvious he was perfectly normal. She had told Zeke, “He isn’t any more neurotic than I am, or Ingrid, or Mike.”