I looked past Easton’s shoulder. There was a blur of movement over by the windows.
Please let that be Owen,
I prayed silently. Behind me Susan made a sputtering sound like someone trying to siphon gas from a car. So she’d seen it, too.
The conductor let out an exasperated breath. “Be that as it may, Miss Paulson, in the short time I have been at your library I’ve been denied basic service and attacked by an out-of-control animal. This was not what I was expecting when I agreed to rearrange my schedule and step in to help your little music festival at the eleventh hour.” He smoothed a hand back over his hair, but one clump continued to stand at attention.
He really was a condescending old goat. An old goat I needed to placate. “And the entire town is grateful that you agreed to step in at the last minute,” I said. Just saying the words made my teeth hurt. I took a step backward, lowering my heel slowly onto the toe of Susan’s right shoe, easing some of my weight down as a warning to her not to say anything, and especially not to laugh at my blatant sucking up. “Again, Mr. Easton, I’m so sorry for what’s happened here.” Susan wiggled her shoe under my foot. I pressed down a little harder. “Please allow me to send breakfast to your suite in the morning to make amends for this evening.”
He twisted a gold pinkie ring around his finger. The upright piece of hair bobbed at me. I kept the pressure on Susan’s foot. “Please, Mr. Easton. It’s the least I can do.” Well, that part was honest.
“Very well, Miss Paulson,” he said, “but it doesn’t excuse what happened here.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, trying not to look at his hair, which seemed to have a life of its own now and was waving merrily at me.
I moved forward again and took Easton’s hand, sandwiching it between mine. “Thank you for your understanding.” I walked him toward the entrance as I talked.
He paused at the doors. “Miss Paulson, most people would make an issue of this. I, however, am not most people.”
“I appreciate your graciousness,” I said, smiling sweetly at him.
He pushed through the doors and disappeared down the stairs.
I sagged against the wall. I hated this kind of thing, charming and flattering people to defuse their anger.
“‘I appreciate your graciousness?’ ” Susan laughed behind me. “I’m going to use that on the preschool teacher the next time the twins glue themselves to the top of the monkey bars.”
“Okay,” I said. “Easton may be a bit of a pompous . . .” I hesitated.
“Windbag? Twit? Horse’s rear?” Susan asked.
“Person,” I said. “But he is right about the computer room. It should be ready by now.” I straightened and walked to the back of the library. “And he didn’t deserve to have my cat pounce on him. Where is that fur ball, by the way?”
“Did you see the man’s hair?” Susan asked. “It was like a little flag up there, waving in the breeze.”
I rubbed the space between my eyebrows with the heel of my hand. “That reminds me. Would you call Eric and ask him to send breakfast to Easton’s room tomorrow?” Susan’s husband, Eric, owned Eric’s Place, a café near the marina. He used local fruits and vegetables, and made everything in the café’s kitchen. “Ask him to send the bill to me, please. Not the library board. And could you ask him to make it . . .” I waved my hands in the air. “Make it elegant, please.”
“Will do,” Susan said. “Why did you bring the cat with you, anyway? Were you going to ask me to babysit—I mean cat sit?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t bring him on purpose. He just somehow snuck into my bag. I don’t know how,” I finished lamely.
“Owen? Where are you?” I called, walking back to the computer area. I looked behind a stack of boxes. A low
murp
came from the wall of windows. I pushed my way around a stack of chairs. Owen sat on the window ledge, seemingly looking out at a sailboat passing on the lake. He was chewing something. I looked around for a head or a corpse of some ill-fated rodent, but found nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“You are in so much trouble,” I told the cat as I picked him up. He gave my chin a gentle head butt, his way of pointing out to both of us that he really wasn’t in that deep. “Do you realize who that was?”
Owen yawned.
“I think he does,” Susan said. “Hey! I have half a tuna sandwich left. Would he like it?”
Owen’s ears twitched at the word “tuna.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I said. “Maybe he’d stay in my office if he had something to eat, and I could still get to tai chi.”
I carried Owen upstairs, and Susan got the leftover sandwich from the refrigerator up in the staff room. Inside my office, with the door firmly closed, she unwrapped the waxed paper and set the half sandwich on the floor behind my desk. Owen sniffed the bread, then carefully licked the filling. His back end did a little wiggly dance of joy. “Thanks,” I said to Susan.
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “I like cats.” She watched Owen hold the bread with a paw so he could lick out more of the tuna filling. “I thought your cats didn’t let anyone but you touch them. So how come this one jumped on the maestro?”
“They don’t,” I said. “But I don’t think Owen meant to land on Mr. Easton’s head. I think maybe he was startled. He jumped and he just miscalculated.” I grinned at her. “Or, heck, maybe from his vantage point on the top of the cabinet, Easton’s head looked like the back end of a squirrel.”
Susan snickered. “You know, I didn’t even notice the cat,” she said. “Suddenly there he was on the maestro’s head. It was almost like one second he was invisible and the next he wasn’t.”
I felt my face getting warm. Before Susan could notice, the phone began to ring down at the circulation desk.
“I’ll get that,” she said.
I dropped into my desk chair as the door closed behind her. “Saved by the bell,” I said to Owen, who had managed to pull the bread apart so he could get at the rest of the tuna, pickle, and mayonnaise. My cheeks were burning. Because the thing was, for a moment, just a moment, I thought Owen
had
been invisible.
Which wasn’t possible.
I leaned down closer to him. “You have to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing,” I said. “Someone’s going to see you. Or not see you.”
The cat didn’t even waste the energy it would have taken to look up at me. I wondered what Susan would have said if I’d told her I thought maybe the cat actually had vanished for a moment. Probably looked to see if I was lining the inside of my sun hat with aluminum foil.
Okay, so, here was the thing: This wasn’t the first time I’d thought I’d seen the cat disappear. The first time had been about six weeks ago. I’d been in the swing in the backyard. Owen had been at my feet, watching the birds. And then he wasn’t. I’d looked for him, certain he’d darted away to stalk some unsuspecting robin. Then he’d appeared again, about ten feet away and in midair, in midleap over a tiny black-and-yellow finch.
“Owen!” I’d shrieked. Startled, the finch had flown away, I’d fallen out of the swing and the cat landed on the grass, legs splayed, looking very undignified. He’d shaken himself and come across the lawn, making pissed-off cat sounds in his throat.
I’d gotten in the swing again and he’d jumped up beside me. We’d swayed slowly back and forth and I’d decided I hadn’t really seen him disappear and then reappear. The sun had been in my eyes. My mind had been wandering.
Okay, I didn’t drink. And this was not one of the signs of a stroke they’d been talking about during the commercial breaks of
Gotta Dance
last night on TV. Was I having a breakdown or maybe a very freaky hallucination?
“Owen, do that again,” I’d said. He’d stared at me. “C’mon. Disappear.” I had slid my hand up and down in front of my face. I’m not sure what I had been expecting; maybe some sort of slow fade-out, the way Alice’s Cheshire Cat had disappeared in Wonderland, until only its smile was left. The cat had looked at me like I’d lost my mind. And then he’d disappeared.
Of course, he’d only disappeared behind the red chokeberry bush.
Cats could not become invisible. It was that simple. Right? Right. Still, I’d been watching him since then. Afraid—or excited?—that something unusual would happen again, no matter how often I told myself what I’d seen was impossible.
Owen had finished eating his tuna and was licking the waxed paper. So I thought I’d seen him disappear again. (So much for those multivitamins.) I was still tired and stressed and there were still problems with the work on the library. So what if once in a while my eyes played tricks on me and it seemed like my cat could make himself invisible? Back in Boston there had been a very nice man on the bus with an invisible friend.
I could still make class if I left right now, I realized. “Okay, you,” I said. “I’m going to tai chi and I’m going to lock you in. Stay here.” The cat started chewing at something stuck to his paw. “No yowling at the door. No disappearing and no jumping on people’s heads. I’ll be back in an hour.”
I got Owen a dish of water from the staff room and locked the office door. “I’m going to tai chi,” I told Susan as I passed the desk. “Owen’s in my office. Please,
please
don’t let him out.”
“Okay,” Susan said. “See you later.”
It was Rebecca who had originally invited me to come to tai chi. In the few months I’d been in town I’d spent almost all of my time at the library. I’d decided to try the class because I was afraid I was going to turn into one of those crazy cat ladies who spent her evenings watching TV with her kitties and acted like they were people. Okay, so technically I was already doing that.
Classes were on the second floor of the artists’ co-op building, downtown across from the river walk. The main floor of the co-op was a craft store. On the second floor were two rooms used for yoga, meditation and tai chi.
Maggie, the instructor, was a mixed-media artist and potter—jugs, mugs and vases all shaped like zaftig naked women. Maggie herself was tall and slender, with green cat eyes and close-cropped blond hair. We’ve been friends since the evening I arrived early for class and found her online at the
Gotta Dance
Web site, voting for Matt Lauer.
The class was just beginning the warm-up. I changed my shoes and took my place in the circle next to Rebecca. She wore a sea-green scarf with her white T-shirt. The color looked good with her silver hair and fair skin. “Welcome home,” I whispered. Rebecca, who had retired from hairdressing a couple of years ago, had been out of town for the last week. I’d been taking in her mail and watering the plants. Knowing her, she’d probably gotten Owen another Fred the Funky Chicken.
“Thank you,” she whispered back.
“Kathleen, bend your knees,” Maggie called.
I blew my bangs out of my eyes and bent my knees a little more. Across the circle Violet smiled at me. Her form always looked so smooth and fluid. Like Rebecca she was in her midsixties. She was tall and slim and the only time she didn’t wear heels was in class.
Next to me Roma Davidson was already starting to sweat. I envied her dark hair cut in a smooth bob that never seemed to fall in her face. She gave me a sly smile and mouthed,
Bend your knees
just as Maggie said it again. Roma was the only vet in Mayville Heights. It struck me that I should ask her about Owen’s catnip addiction, just to be sure he wasn’t going to turn into a little kitty junkie. As far as his hypothetically invisible antics, I’d keep those to myself.
By the time class was over Maggie had told me to bend my knees at least half a dozen times. I was more awkward than usual and my hair kept flopping in my face. At one point Maggie had passed behind me and touched the back of my head with two fingers. “Empty your mind, Kath,” she’d whispered.
Easy for her to say. If I emptied my mind where was I going to put everything?
We always ended with the complete form. Only Maggie and Ruby can do all 108 movements. One by one the rest of us moved to the side to watch them. When they were finished Maggie gave a slight bow and said, “See you all on Thursday. Practice.”
Ruby stretched both arms out to her sides. She painted huge abstracts and she was the most flexible person I’ve ever seen. She had more piercings than anyone I’ve ever seen, either.
Ruby always had a couple of historical romances among her books on organic gardening and back issues of
Mother Earth News
. A woman of eclectic interests. She was also in the festival choir. “How’s practice for the final concert going?” I asked.
“Okay, considering the world-famous conductor is a creepy old perv,” she said. She stretched her arms up over her head, then bent forward and put both hands on the floor. “And he’s not that great a conductor,” she added, turning her head sideways to look at me. “I’ve had twelve years of voice and I know the difference between an okay conductor and one who can really feel the music.” She walked her hands out away from her feet, the tips of her spiky hair just brushing the floor. It was blue this week.
I couldn’t help thinking that if I were in that position it would sound a lot like someone deboning a turkey.
“And worst of all, he’s a feelie.”
“A what?” I said, pulling at the neck of my T-shirt. I was sweating.
“A feelie. You know, he has to put his hands on your shoulders to fix your posture. He has to put his hands on your diaphragm to check your breathing. A feelie.” Ruby laughed, which sounded more like a snort because she was upside down. “I had to put my elbow in his diaphragm a couple of times. To check
his
breathing, of course.” She began walking her hands back to her feet again. “If I were Ami Lester . . . boy.”
Ami Lester? Right. A pretty strawberry blonde who’d borrowed all of Diana Gabaldon’s books from the library. She was one of the summer interns at the Stratton. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Ami has two solos,” Ruby said. She pulled her head in against her tanned legs, and her voice was slightly muffled. “Easton likes her. I don’t mean holy-crap-can-she-sing likes her. And yeah, she can. I mean, he’s-a-dirty-old-man likes her.”