The Big Meow

“Why don’t you introduce us?” the she-ehhif said.

The Silent Man looked away and pointedly had another drink of his coffee.

The she-ehhif looked at Helen, put out a white-gloved hand. “Anya Harte,” she said, with the air of someone who expected the other party to know the name as a matter of course.

“Miss Harte,” Helen said, and reached up to shake the hand held out to her. “Helen Walks Softly.”

“Why, how wonderfully…ethnic!” Miss Harte said, turning away from Helen to smirk at the Silent Man. “You know, you’re just going to be confirming what everyone’s heard about your exotic tastes in the ladies.” She somehow managed to make “exotic” sound like a bad word. “But then it’s to be expected, I suppose, as what you’re used to by now. Your wife’s a Spanish countess, after all, no matter what some people say! And where is Mrs. Runyon, by the way? It’s been so long since we’ve seen her around.”

The Silent Man just looked at Miss Harte. Finally he reached for the pen again, aware that in the shadows of the door into the main room, people were standing, trying not to look as if they were watching. He scribbled for a moment, tore a page off the pad and held it up.

OUT OF TOWN

“I’m sure she is,” Miss Harte said. “Well, while the cat’s away! – so to speak.” She smiled what even Rhiow could have told was a poisonous smile for an ehhif, if her whiskers hadn’t already been practically vibrating with the sense of happy spite that emanated from the woman.

Miss Harte turned on Helen a look that was as simultaneously dismissive and envious as the expression of the Person in her bag. “Are you in the business?”

“The only one that matters,” Helen said, still smiling.

Miss Harte sucked in a long, happily scandalized breath. “Oh, my!” she said. “And you’re so open about it! But I’m sure you’ll do very well at it, with your dark good looks.”

“Thank you,” Helen said, that absolutely imperturbable smile shifting not a fraction. “But better an honest darkness than night masquerading as the innocent day.”

At that Miss Harte blinked, but only for a second. “And you recite your lines so nicely, too! You should really come out and meet some of the really important movie people, so that you can get out of the bit-part rat race! A whole lot of the people from the big studios are going to be up at the party at Dagenham’s tonight. It’s an open party, Mr. Runyon would have no trouble getting you in, there are lots of people who’d love to see someone like you there – ”

Rhiow sat there in wonder listening to that little tinkly voice, which seemed able to imply something cruel or cutting with practically every word. It made her think of the sound that broken bottles made when dumped into the Manhattan garbage trucks early in the morning: little razor-sharp shards, raining down, every one of them capable of slicing you deep if you would only pick it up the wrong way… “Oh, do come along to Dagenham’s tonight, Mr. Runyon! They’d be ever so surprised to see you.” Some further nasty implication lay behind the words: Rhiow was uncertain whether she wanted to know just what. “And just for a laugh, you should bring all your little friends!” The People were included in the glance, but the word seemed mostly for Helen.

“Dagenham’s?” Helen said, looking over at the Silent Man.

He shook his head, shrugged.

“Oh, you must know Elwin Dagenham, he does freelance PR for Goldwyn and Paramount and everybody, and he’s so successful at it, he has a lovely big house up in the hills, there’ll be just hundreds of influential people, and all that champagne and caviar! He has the most wonderful caterers, but then he would have to, with all the important people he knows, you can’t serve them just anything – ”

Miss Harte went prattling on, and the Silent Man watched her, apparently politely enough. But watching him, Rhiow could see – if the queen-ehhif couldn’t – that there was absolutely no engagement in his eyes. His regard of Miss Harte was entirely the detached look of a scholar examining some exotic and faintly repulsive life form. For her own part, Rhiow started to wash her face, and used the moment to steal another look at that dress. She wasn’t entirely clear about ehhif fashions of this period, but the top would have seemed cut fairly low in her home time. “’Ruah,” she said to her teammate with a sidewise glance, “is it just me, or is this queen-ehhif – “

“ – for here and now, dressed in a way that’s just a yowl short of rolling on the ground and waving her ffiyth in the air?” Urruah said. “Absolutely.” He glanced out toward the front room. “No wonder the maitre d’ wanted to get her out of sight. There would be some ehhif queens who dress that way around here, but not in daylight, and not in respectable places…”