Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

She was a tiny woman who didn’t like to be reminded of it, not even by herself. So she gritted her teeth and took one laboring step after another, counting each one. The high heels didn’t encourage efficient locomotion while toting overweight cats, but elevation was enough of an issue with her that she didn’t mind. Three, four, five steps... uh. Maybe Matt Devine was by the pool working on his tan and his physique, both already perfect, but why stop now? He could help her with Louie. No, she could make it herself. Eight, nine, ten steps. The gate. Ah.

She eased the case to the hot concrete and sighed as her shoulder joint assumed its normal alignment. The vet was right; Louie desperately needed a diet.

A distant droning she took for bees in the honeysuckle vine draping the pierced concrete wall grew louder. Temple frowned and eyed the cat carrier. Was Louie growling again? He had not accepted his trip to the vet in the best of graces. The noise increased into a surflike roar.

Temple peered through her sunglasses toward the side street as the roar crested, then slowed into a chatter. Something large, silver and meaner-looking than a robotic junkyard dog, Terminator-style, turned into the driveway and rolled directly toward Temple.

She felt the nasty little twinge motorcycles had inspired since The Wild Bunch. They conjured visions of Nazis and Hell’s Angels. Today’s anonymous riders, now helmeted with obscuring black visors, did nothing to improve the image.

This motorcyclist wore a black nylon windbreaker and rolled the machine right up to Temple, the engine still clattering.

Temple eyed machine and rider, ready to dash through the gate should it or he/she jump either the concrete car-stop or her person. Then she read the hot-pink words emblazoned over the smoked-Plexiglas helmet visor.

“Speed Queen?” Temple articulated incredulously.

The engine died with a final clank as the rider’s ankle-boot-clad feet hit hot asphalt. One hand lifted from the handles and whipped up the visor.

Electra Lark’s genial sixtyish face peered past the bowling ball of silver metallic paint that covered her head. She was grinning like a Halloween pumpkin.

“Just me. And wait a minute. You gotta see this.” Electra slung a leg over the long black leather seat and engaged the kick stand as soon as she stood on her own two feet.

Temple nervously watched the older woman stepped away from the motorcycle. It tilted but did not tumble. At her high-heeled feet, Louie growled warning. No chattering silver metal beast was going to intimidate him, not even after a dose of something as civilizing as “shots.”

“A beauty, isn’t it?” Electra demanded.

“If you like cold steel.”

“Hot steel, honey.”

“It will be if you leave it parked in this noonday sun for long.”

“Oh, no. This baby will shelter in the shade of the gardening shed at the back.”

“Has it always been kept there?”

Electra’s open glance shifted. “Not always. But it’ll be coining out a lot more now. I just got my license today.”

“Hey, that’s wonderful!” Temple was always primed to applaud another person’s self-improvement program. “It can’t be easy to drive one of these monsters. But, Electra... why?”

The woman pulled off the sinister helmet, revealing a spiky crew cut of silver hair ending in a long pigtail in back. On most late-middle-aged women such a hairdo would seem a pathetic attempt at kicky youth; on Electra it looked funky and even elegant.

Electra’s head tilted until her ear cuffs chimed. She eyed the silver motorcycle and tried, “Because it was there?”

“But why was it there?” Temple persisted with the determination of an ex-TV reporter. “You never mentioned having one. I’ve never seen—or even more to the point, heard it before.”

Electra’s hand patted the leather seat as if stroking the flank of a favorite steed. “It was Max’s.”

“Max’s?” Temple hadn’t meant to sound sharp, or shocked, but she did. Both.

Electra’s silver-metal boot toe kicked the asphalt. “A cycle’s real practical with all the traffic jams in Vegas. And it is a beauty.”

Temple stared at the thing as if it had landed from Mars. “I had no idea that Max liked—had—a motorcycle.”

“Hey, he used it as the down payment on the condo.” Temple eyed her landlady incredulously. She was getting tired of learning things about Max after he was gone—long gone. Four months gone without a goodbye, with no explanation.

“Speaking of the condo,” Temple began uncomfortably, “I had to take Louie to the vet and it cost a fortune. I might be a little late with the monthly maintenance money, but not the mortgage.”

“Don’t worry about it, dear.” Electra’s waving hand ignited a shower of glints from the many rings covering her fingers like chain mail. “I know it’s tough when suddenly one person is paying on a place instead of two. Besides, according to folks who know their motorcycles, this baby is worth major moolah. It’s a classic.”

“How classic can a motorcycle get?”

“Plenty. It’s a Hesketh Vampire.”