“Mine would be different.”
Sidra reinstalled her veil, looking at Max.
Kathleen interrupted any answer he would give. “I have an ear for languages. I can change my eye and skin color. I am a chameleon.”
The beautiful eyes held a question.
Kathleen realized the comparison was unfamiliar. “Like a lizard whose scales turn color to blend into its background. These men like to bomb, torture, destroy, enslave, and behead. I wonder if there is something they would very much not like to have beheaded?”
The woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed.
Kathleen continued. “What’s good for the…she-goat, is even worse for the goat. An American saying. It would certainly put a crimp in recruitment.”
The woman nodded. “You mean, we could…?”
“We always could, we just didn’t. Us.” She pounded her breast bone with a fist. “No more enslaved sisters and mothers and daughters.”
Kathleen eyed Max and said under her breath. “I won’t bother telling her that I hate men.”
Sidra nodded. “Once we are in Afghanistan, we will pass unnoticed unless they wish to beat us for being seen on the streets. I envy Western women. They are so…inventive.”
“I’ll leave you then,” Max said. “Remember, Sidra. She is small but fierce.”
Kathleen put a clutching hand on his arm. “You’ve always had a nerve on you, Max Kinsella.” She lowered her face veil. “And so have I.”
He watched the black-shrouded women leave the tented room to blend into the Parisian night. Black-shrouded ghosts, indistinguishable.
“Her eyes they shone like the diamonds,
You’d think she was queen of the land,
Only alternate closing lyrics resonated in his mind.
And her hair flowed back from her shoulders,
unbound underneath a black linen band.
40
Midnight Louie Rings Out the Old…
Alone at last.
As soon as my Miss Temple and her Mr. Matt have made their evening visit to console me on my temporary solo stint at the Circle Ritz and moved on to view the reconstruction above (I am secretly looking forward to stairs and a double balcony), I rush to the zebra-stripe carrier that has been left behind as my presumed sleeping quarters.
I duck my head into the open end, under the hated zippered top, and put my right foot in, my left foot in, and shake it all about in this hokey cat pokey.
As I had hoped, an errand-boy Fontana brother had brought the carrier “home” and done the same usual, tidy job as they would do on a Gangsters limo returning from a jaunt if a customer had left a nail file or a diamond ring behind.
My probing shivs snag something old that makes me blue, leftover from the wedding. I drag it into the concentrated illumination of a nightlight.
I have found a black velvet band.
I pull on the elastic break-away section until I view the white formal bow-tie that has survived two weddings.
Now that my role as Ring Bearer has been exposed to the entire viewing public by a weasel of a man who has been a thorn in my Miss Temple’s side and other assorted places, I need to wash my mitts of the whole miserable, humiliating situation with a ritual of my own.
If I must wear costume bits in the future commercials, at least I will be well paid for it. These two Ring Bearer gigs for Mr. Matt’s mother and now my new united roommates must be the last of their kind. The end.
I pick up the collar with a snarl of repulsion on my lips, crush it under my foot, and use my head to stretch it open enough to don.
Then I begin my long journey under cover of night to dispose of this unwanted souvenir for good.
Of course I am caught at the very outset by a hanger-on from Ma Barker’s cat pack as I trot through the parking lot and into the shelter of the oleander hedge.
“Where are you going, Mr. Midnight?” pipes a small, wee voice.
“None of your business.” I look down at what would be a dust bunny if it was inside. “What are you doing here alone? You are too young to be out without your mommy.”
He takes offence, hisses more like a teapot than a snake, and produces a darling spiky little halo of yellow-orange baby fur. Bast spare me!
“I am four-and-a-half-months and twelve days old.”
“Too young,” I growl. “You need to eat your Free-to-be-Feline and grow up to be big and strong like me.”
“That stuff is rank. I see you drag Free-to-Be-Feline out to the clowder, but I never see you eat it.”
“Because I gobbled so much of it when I was your age.” (And did not know better.)
I try to pass him, but he has those kitten reflexes, and bobs and dodges when I do.
“Look, Kit. I am on important business. Dangerous business. Life-threatening business.”
“Goodie. I want to be your—”
I give him the mild brush-off with a side-bump. “Be my what?”
“Apprentice.”
Now there is a dirty word if I ever heard one.
I nose him back into the light of the parking lot with a few gruff growls. “Look at you. Scrawny as a starving rat. What do they call that coat color?” I survey a mash-up of white paws and yellow and orange stripes and tufts sticking out any which way.
“Ma Barker calls me her little pumpkin.”
“That is not an effective street name if you want to get out and about in the neighborhood and survive the bullies.”
“What would be better?”
“I am not a walking Name-the-Baby book.”
He sits down and hangs his head.
“Okay, fuzz-bottom. I got a better name. Punky. Why did you hang around when Ma put the kittlings to bed back at the police substation?”
His round kitten eyes, too muddy to tell their final color, narrow. “The substation is a low-level crime-fighting operation. I saw all the housebreaker and Fontana brothers action around this place and figured you would soon be beginning a new undercover assignment.”
“Undercover assignment?”
“Under the cover of that sissy zebra-stripe carrier. I see they import you to crime scenes in that.”
I like this kit. “Yeah, well, I had to go along with that low-profile approach to save a lot of people.”
By “crime scene”, I am not sure whether he means my formerly exclusive roommate’s faux wedding-cum-armed robbery or her real-this-time wedding. In either case I witnessed me, myself, and I becoming a third wheel as well as a much put-upon Ring Bearer.
Okay, I did stage manage a masterful musical distraction at the first “wedding”, and got revenge on Crawford Buchanan by exposing the pusillanimous wedding crasher at the second once-in-a-lifetime event.
(And it had better be, because I will not don the Collar of Shame again.)
I shudder to recall the many photos and videos taken of me wearing my formal white tie, and Buchanan’s snarky references in his gossip column to my “cushy midsection, slightly askew whiskers, need of a manicure and a rubdown with a lint-remover”.
While I seethe doing a fast rewind down memory lane, Punky’s sharp little shivs are prodding my shoulder.
“Crime-fighting, that is what I want to learn about, Mr. Midnight. I was best in my litter at fly-catching, bug-biting, and free-style cactus-climbing.”
“Climbing, huh?”
The kit dances around me, feinting with his tiny claws.
“It is going to be a long, confusing walk in the dark,” I warn, “unless I can catch us a ride.”
“Motor Vehicles of Death?” Punky nods. “Usually they catch us, I am told.”
“An urban legend. It goes two ways with MVDs,” I tell him. “Always a hard call for our kind. Black is beautiful, but invisible on dark streets. White is a flag for sadists who, sadly, go for road kill. Your coat color is almost fluorescent, which makes you a target. Life is hard, but death is harder, Punky.”
“I will be all right. You know your way around.”
“That I do. Can you tote this fancy neckpiece while I look for a quick ride?”
“Sure.” He sits upright as I paw the thing off my neck and lower the white bow-tie around his. He takes a deep breath so his upright posture does not sink.
So I now have an unwanted tail. Can Bast make things any harder for me? I am pretty sure she can.