Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

The media people focused on Mavis Davis with a universally jaundiced eye: a youngish Julia Child without even a chicken wing as a prop to offer the media. Half of them were dreaming over their own book proposals and the encouraging editor, or sales rep, or friend of an editor or sales rep, that they had buttonholed earlier on the convention floor, anyway. Claudia kept her whip out—her strident, almost viciously cheerful voice. She rounded ’em up, headed ’em in, plunked ’em down and... another four hours of raw hide.

Mavis Davis had been deposited facing them on a tastefully upholstered tweed chair, with a freestanding tweed room divider behind her to which Lorna Fennick was hastily tacking posters of the latest Davis title, Ladybug, Ladybug. According to the press release, it followed the medical and off-hours career of an arsonist pediatric nurse. The ladybug pictured on the cover, fully embossed to sensual depth, had a blood-bright shell with tiny black skull markings and wings of red-foil fire.

“People read this stuff?” Lieutenant Molina hissed this in Temple’s ear loudly enough to be heard at twenty feet. “It’s sick! Gives the wacko element ideas.”

Heads whipped around. Claudia Esterbrook glared as her talons scored a glossy folder until the cover stock split.

“You obviously haven’t been keeping up with the bestseller list, Lieutenant,” Temple noted. “Your profession is quite well represented,”

“Libeled, you mean,” Molina said.

Claudia started the show with a clarion throat-clearing that silenced the well-trained media people. Most were ABA veterans, being book page editors, and knew that Claudia demanded a meek flock in her field. If she found them derelict in their devotion to duty—attending the endless round of programs, interviews, author breakfasts, etc.—she could jerk their press credentials, or at least tarnish them a bit. They settled down, pencils poised and cameras, whether hand-held photographic models or shoulder-high videotape machines, cocked.

Everyone was ready but Mavis Davis, who sat fidgeting with a copy of her novel until the dust jacket crinkled.

“How did you happen upon the idea of writing about lethal nurses, Miss Davis?” came the first, hardly original question.

“Ah—” Mavis Davis was a raw-boned woman whose hair had been crimped into an unflattering greige Brillo pad by the Las Vegas oven. Her figured polyester dress must have acted like a nylon tent, sealing in the heat. Her cheeks were hot spots of ruby-red blusher on a pallor of genuine stage fright. Temple had never seen a person less suited to a public interview. She felt sorry for her.

“Ah,” Mavis Davis repeated. Even her voice was unfortunate, an attenuated quiver that couldn’t make up its mind whether to sing alto or soprano. “It’s the contrast, you see. Behind a calling of mercy, of care and the, the... well, you don’t expect a nurse to do anything drastic, do you? On purpose, that is. That’s the fascination.”

“Are you implying, Miss Davis, that there’s a feminist undertone to your subject matter; that men are usually assumed to be capable of violence and mayhem, but not women? There’ve been plenty of villainous doctors in fiction and true-crime nonfiction.”

“Exactly,” Mavis Davis said eagerly. “Nurses are so innocent, you see; all in white, like brides. And then, their victims, my victims—in my books, that is—are innocent, too. Helpless children. Well, I can’t really say why my books are so popular, except that it’s a contrast between innocence and evil. And readers always like that.”

“But your nurse antagonists aren’t innocent caregivers; they’re more of the Nurse Ratched school.”

“Nurse Ratchet School? I’ve never heard of—”

“Like the villainous head nurse that persecuted Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Mavis Davis blinked. “What an odd title. It’s much too long for a book.”

“It was a film. And a book before that.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know it, young man. Perhaps you could ask me something about one of the characters in my books.”

Silence prevailed.

Then a woman’s voice lilted from the rear. “What about reality, Miss Davis? Has the death of your editor, the chief of your publishing imprint, Chester Royal, given you second thoughts about the fictional deaths your novels portray?”

“Of course, I’m devas-devastated. I’ve worked with Mr. Royal from the beginning of my career. Only Mr. Royal has edited my books. I, I don’t know what I’ll do without him—”

Lorna Fennick spoke up with smooth efficiency. “We will find you another editor as congenial as Mr. Royal, Miss Davis. You are a revered author with Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce. We’ll hardly abandon you, no matter the circumstance.”

“Still...” Mavis Davis smiled weakly. “I’m not a writer by first career, you know. I was a nurse—quite a different nurse from those I write about, I might add. It’s hard to—to change horses in midstream—”