Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

I poke my puss through a curtain, clamber over an Everest of disheveled cartons, dodge several empty Big Gulp-size paper cups and a Big Mac wrapper that has been sucked clean—and find myself nose to nose with a white male sixty-some years of age with specs as thick as the lens at Mount Palomar and no more earthly use for them.

He is supine among the effluvia and deader than a stripper’s Monday afternoon audience at the Lace ’n’ Lust downtown. I trot around front to catch the booth number. The booth itself is fairly unmistakable, being blazoned with illustrations of assorted bodies in a similar if more spectacular condition of permanent paralysis than the current corpse. There are also depictions of such sinister implements as hypodermic needles dripping blood and embossed silver scalpels lethal-looking enough for Lizzie Borden to be alive and well and using them to practice medicine without a license.

I commit the name on the above-booth banner to memory—Pennyroyal Press—and retreat to more pleasant venues to await morning and an opportunity to acquaint the authorities with my discovery in a way that will do my duty as a citizen and leave my name off any list of suspects.

1

Chester’s Last Chapter

“Some cat’scutting loose on the convention floor,” the guard grumbled, heading for the office coffeepot. “Thought we were supposed to be on the lookout for international terrorists.”

“A cat!” Temple’s head whipped to attention, abandoning her computer screen. “Where?”

The guard shook his own head, which was decorated by a wilted lei of gray hair, and donned his cap. Caffeine piddled from the spigot until foam lapped the rim of his Styrofoam cup. “Kitty Kong. Some terrorist.”

“Listen, Lloyd, a very valuable cat happens to be missing from an exhibit this morning—two, in fact. We need to corral them before we open the floor to the exhibitors. Where was it seen?”

Lloyd scratched his scalp, almost dethroning his cap. “You office girls are all cat crazy.”

Temple made her full five feet zero as she stood, slamming the oversize glasses atop her head to the bridge of her nose.

“I’m not an ‘office girl.’ I’m liaison for local PR for this convention, and I don’t give a flying fandango about pussycats on the job unless they’re relevant to public relations, so you can bet that corporate mascots like Baker and Taylor are bloody vital to the American Booksellers Convention. Baker and Taylor happens to be one of the country’s top book wholesalers.”

Temple paused, breathlessly, to dive under her desk and withdraw a formidable canvas bag emblazoned with the words “Temporus Vitae Libri." A freebie from Time-Life Books.

She edged around the desk, frowning. “Now where is this rogue feline? If he’s beneath your notice, I’ll bag him personally.”

Lloyd examined her three-inch heels, her elephant-bladder-size bag and her implacably determined face. She didn’t look a day over twenty-one—despite being in imminent danger of pushing thirty, well, twenty-eight, and regretted it bitterly. July was her natal month and this was the cusp of May and June.

Lloyd’s head jerked over his shoulder. “Somewhere near the sequined zebra on the stick.”

“Zebra on a stick? Oh, you mean the Zebra Books carousel. Damnation”—Temple eyed the silver-dollar-size watch face that obscured her wrist—“the doors open at nine. Good thing book people sleep late. Probably up reading all night.”

She clicked out of the office, bag flapping, while Lloyd muttered something uncouth about “modern women” into his scalding coffee.