Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Of course I am not letting Louie loose on the town,” she answers. “It would not be ready to cope with him. And now that we have had this close call at the airport, I am keeping tabs on him twenty-four seven.”

This does not sound promising, but we are thirty-seven stories up and I have no immediate plans to leave my Miss Temple’s side. From what I have overheard, Mr. Matt’s circle of Polish relatives are old-fashioned and extremely religious.

Normally I understand the shock and awe that keeps one of any religion treading lightly when it comes to a godhead. If you have seen a statue of Bast, worshipped the world over for around five thousand years by those of the feline persuasion, you have seen a stern and demanding deity frozen in time and eternity, possessor of untold lives.

We nine-lifers of today are pipsqueaks.

However, I cannot understand supposedly modern folks who would frown on my Miss Temple as a suitable partner for any dude. Mr. Matt withdrew from the priesthood with all the right papers signed and sealed, from what I have heard. It might be iffier because he was the offspring of an unsanctioned match. His mama was one of these unwed individuals you read about, especially in Hollywood.

So is mine and no one would dare hold that fact up to my old lady, Ma Barker, leader of the pack. Unwed mothers, and fathers, go back into the nth generation all the way to Bast, a female deity. I can assure you that the ring in her one ear is not a wedding band.

I must admit that I will approach Mr. Matt’s Chicago clan with my ears down and shivs sharpened. Any attempt to make my Miss Temple feel bad will be swiftly punished.

So, no. I am not leaving her side, as much as she thinks that she is not leaving mine. We have shared a bed for a long time and I dare anyone who would call ours an unsanctioned relationship to stand up on their hind feet and fight.

So there.

Chapter 6

Fast Food 4 Thought

Max Kinsella brought home many memorabilia from his tour of the Circle Ritz, a full slide show in his mind. The first was a recaptured memory of the building’s quaint wood-paneled elevator cars, small enough to be elegant coffin.

Okay.

Click to an image less morose.

He envisioned the triangular patios at the “corners” of the four outermost units on each of the five floors. Electra had not let him tour any occupied premises, of course, especially not Temple and Matt’s, which were above each other, his on top.

Okay.

Click the laboriously operated memory to something less … personal.

Electra did guide him to the attached wedding chapel with its soft sculpture figures in the pews. Nope. Still personal.

The circling narrow halls that led to short cul-de-sacs with “front doors” for each unit seemed the safest territory. He remembered them well now, as well as the insecure French doors leading to the balcony patios, which he had used many times.

The only things he’d brought back to this safeguarded low-profile home, formerly the property of his slain longtime mentor, were more vague ghosts.