Homemade Sin (2 page)

“Where is this voice coming from?” Roland said aloud.

Down the bar, the puffy, sunburned man bellowed, “Hey asshole, I ordered a Mango Daiquiri – this tastes more like peach – and I wanted it frozen, not on the rocks. Jesus, you'd never make it in New York. Back there bartenders know customer service, they ain't inbred southern yokels.”

The bartender gritted his teeth and slipped over to the other side of the bar to wait on the obnoxious tourist.

Where did that voice come from? Roland wondered. He stared over at the picture of Hemingway on the wall. “Couldn't be you,” he slurred at the picture, “you were never opposed to a bit of rum.”

“Down here on the floor,” said the voice in his head.

Roland bent over as far as he dared without losing what was left of his balance and peered into the gradient of shadows beneath his bar stool. As his vision adjusted to the upside down point of view, he began to make out two pairs of glowing green eyes. The eyes peered back at him with a disturbing mixture of intelligence and insanity as they floated above the beer-stained floorboards. Through the alcohol-saturated blood rushing to his head Roland managed to identify two thin black cats, their onyx bodies, barely visible in the darkness. As his eyes adjusted, Roland could make out two white feline faces with odd black markings, resembling eyebrows, goatees and little Hitler mustaches.

“Is that you two in my head?” Roland slurred.

“Yes, it's me in your head,” replied the voice in Roland's head, “My name is Stinky and you're having a telepathic conversation with a pussycat. And I'm only one cat. You're seeing double; you'd better sit up before you pass out.”

I must be losing it, thought Roland, taken aback as he grasped the bar and hoisted himself upright on the barstool. “How am I hearing your thoughts in my head?”

“It happens.” Stinky climbed out from under Roland's' barstool and positioned himself in Roland's direct line of sight. “Not often, just every once in a while, two creatures from different species connect. Maybe they're attuned to the same frequency and they can communicate with each other without actual words. I'm not sure … I think that must be what's happening here. I can hear your thoughts in my head and you can hear mine, a sure sign that we are meant to be friends. And as your friend I have to advise you to go a little lighter on the rum. That stuff is bad for you.”

Roland tried to wrap his inebriated brain around the possibility the cat was somehow communicating with him telepathically. Impossible, he thought, I must be hallucinating. Hallucinating or not, he rationalized, it would be bad manners to ignore him and, like my mother always said, ‘good manners cost nothing.'

“How do you know rum is bad for me?” said Roland. “You ever tried it?”

“Alcohol is an abomination,” Roland heard. “I've seen what it can do to people on the street, lost souls who have fallen into the drink.”

“Well, how can you knock it if you haven't tried it?” Roland slurred at the pussy. He faced the bartender and winked. The bartender was staring at him, slack jawed.

Ignoring the bartender's raised eyebrows Roland tilted his head down to address the cat. “Tell you what,” Roland proposed. “What if I buy you a drink? If you don't like it, I'll close my tab and leave.”

The midnight-black mouser seemed to ponder the proposition. “Sounds fair,” said Stinky's voice in Roland's head. “But make it something with cream in it; I like cream. I hear brandy is a classy drink. And put it in a saucer, please.”

Roland motioned to the bartender, who gave him a cautious look, as one does with crazy people.

“Gimme a Brandy Alexander,” Roland said to Travis, “and put it in a saucer.”

“That damned cat must be back again.” Travis shook his head as he poured brandy, cream and ice into the blender.

Down the bar the red-faced, puffy man slammed his hand down hard and yelled, “Hey, Goober, you want to put some alcohol in this drink? Tastes like watered-down cat piss. God, you rednecks are inept.”

“Tell him to go light on the ice this time,” said the voice in Roland's head, “and to use the good brandy, the Napoleon, not the bar crap, I'll be right back.” Roland watched as Stinky crept along the floor down along the bar.

“Can you hear him too?” said Roland.

“Hear him?” the bartender said. “You've had too many Rum Runners. And the shot of tequila I gave you was a bad idea. No buddy, I don't hear him; but that little black rummy comes in here a lot and mews until I pour him some cream in a bowl; he mews even louder if I don't add a shot of something. He likes brandy best … he spits and hisses at me if I use cheap brandy.”

“You don't hear him talking to you in your head?”

Travis gave Roland a ‘here goes another crazy, drunk tourist' sigh. “Nope, he just meows at me. Are you sure it's not aliens talking to you? Would you like a little anti-voices hat made out of aluminum foil? It wouldn't be the first one of those I've made for a customer.”

“I'm back,” said Stinky from beneath Roland's barstool. “Now where were we?”

“You conned me,” Roland said as he placed the saucer of milk and brandy before the cat.

“You're a writer aren't you?” Stinky ignored Roland's accusation. “I can smell it on you, stronger than my own musky aroma. I can even see it in your aura, a crazy quilt of swirling patchwork colors. I'm looking for a new writer to be my friend, someone to inspire.”

“So you're some kind of feline muse?” said Roland.

“Yeah, you'll do,” purred Stinky, again ignoring Roland, as he furiously lapped up the creamy cocktail.

“I thought you said you didn't drink.”

“Not at all,” purred Stinky as he finished his drink and licked the brandy-laced cream from his whiskers. “I said you shouldn't drink, I didn't say I shouldn't. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“What do you mean ‘we'?”' Roland said.

Down the bar, the red-faced man, drink in hand, stood and headed for the restroom. He took one step and toppled to the floor. On the way down he helicoptered his arms, trying to gain his balance, and tossed the entire contents of the sticky drink in his own face. He landed on the hardwood bar floor, flat on his face, mango daiquiri dripping down his cheeks. He rolled over and looked at his shoes and saw the laces of his topsiders were tied together. The other patrons in the bar were laughing and applauding.

“Who's the wise guy?” the man bellowed, rolling around on the floor like an upended turtle.

Roland heard the sound of a kitty sniggering in his head

“You did that didn't you?” Roland said.

“Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. He needed to be taught some humility.” Stinky rubbed a paw along his whiskers to catch the last lick of Brandy Alexander.

“So it was no accident,” said Roland.

“‘A gentleman doesn't hurt anyone accidentally,'” came the feline's voice. “My friend Oscar Wilde said that.”

“Are you telling me you knew both Oscar Wilde and Hemingway?” Roland said.

“And Nabokov and Tolstoy and John Steinbeck,” Stinky said. “Ever read The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe? I was the inspiration. Tennessee Williams once kicked me down a flight of stairs.”

“You're telling me your previous owners were some of the greatest writers of all time?” Even hammered Roland found this hard to believe.

“I never said ‘owners.'” Stinky's voice again. “They were my friends, and I was their muse. ‘You can't own another creature, but another creature can own you.' My friend Truman Capote said that.”

I'm losing it, Roland thought. Enough for me. When I get hustled for drinks by a delusional kitty cat it's time for me to go sleep it off. Roland dropped enough cash on the bar to cover his tab and the cat's Brandy Alexander and started for the door.

“Wait, wait,” said Stinky in Roland's head as the cat fell in behind him, following him at heel, “where are you going? It's early and we were just getting to know each other.”  

“Who are you? What are you?” said Roland.

“I told you, I'm Stinky, the Fierce Feline of Fatalism, the Caustic Cat of Cataclysm, I am the Kitty Courier of Catastrophe. Through the centuries I have gone by many names; Bast in Egypt, Quetzalcoatl in Mexico and Bossu in Port-au-Prince. Over the last five hundred years I have known kings, queens, conquerors, despots, presidents, potentates, assassins and serial killers. I was once a powerful god but I was defrocked. Not that I actually had a frock. I did have a nice necklace and kind of a tiara thing in Egypt. Anyway, I was demoted to muse; now I provide inspiration to novelists, artists, poets and playwrights. You can call me Stinky; it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“I've got to go sleep this off,” Roland muttered to himself, stepping out of Sloppy Joe's into the darkness of Duval Street. He turning left and headed for Duval House.

“Where are we going?” Stinky stayed hot on Roland's heels.

“There's that we again,” said Roland. “I'm going back to my motel room to sleep until I no longer hear a talking kitty in my head. I don't care where you go.”

“Hey, don't be like that,” said Stinky. “I've decided you and I are going to be friends. And leaving me on the street is no way to repay that honor. Where is our hotel?”

“Just go away and leave me alone,” said Roland as he weaved his way up the street. As he passed the Aqua Nightclub, a famous drag-show dance club, one of the drag queens stationed by the door, dressed as Cher, noticed Stinky chasing Roland up Duval Street and commented; “That's the first time I've ever seen pussy chasing a man in Key West. You go get him Stinky!”

Roland stopped and stared down at the tomcat trailing along behind him. “Do you know everybody in this town?”

“That was Jeffie. He a makes a pretty convincing Cher don't you think? You'll meet him soon.”

Roland shook his head in disbelief, which caused him to list a little to the left as he continued up Duval Street.

Stinky followed Roland back to Duval House, a quaint little Old Key West hotel which consisted of a large main house with small cottages nestled around a swimming pool in the rear courtyard. Stinky strode beside him, dodging his weaving feet, as Roland staggered past the wooden picket gate, around the pool and to the door of his courtyard cottage. Roland fumbled with the keys finally turning the lock and stumbling through the door. Stinky slipped through his legs, leapt upon Roland's bed, curled up into a furry ball on his pillow and began to purr like a chainsaw being molested like a bear.

Roland told himself he would deal with the wayward puss in the morning. He rationalized that he was too drunk and too tired to try to eject the animal from his bed tonight, so he followed Stinky over to the bed and fell across the mattress beside the feline. It took about ten seconds for the smell to reach his nose and penetrate the drunken fog and register in his olfactory senses.

“Jesus you stink!” slurred Roland as the smell of rotten fish assaulted his senses. “I couldn't smell you in the bar but now … phew!”

Stinky continued to purr.

Roland rolled off the bed into a kneeling position. He used the mattress to push himself erect and trod an erratic path to the window. After some fumbling he managed to turn the window lock and raise the window about halfway before it stuck.

“Tomorrow we part company,” Roland informed Stinky as he stumbled back to the bed.

An hour later, with Roland snoring sotto voce, Stinky opened one eye and stared at his new friend's sleeping form, making sure he was asleep. Stinky ran a soft paw across Roland's cheek and when Roland failed to react, Stinky leapt from the bed to the window and slipped away into the moonlit courtyard. He weaved purposefully through the side streets and back alleys of Key West, under a gibbous moon. Finally he stopped at the rear entrance of a fish restaurant, slipped in through an exhaust vent in the back wall and disappeared. A few minutes later he returned to the alley through the same exhaust vent and crept to the dumpster behind the restaurant. Stinky crawled through a gap below the dumpster and retrieved a small plastic vial of green powder with his paws. He had acquired the power from a local voodoo shop earlier and hid it away in the dumpster for just such an occasion.

Securing the vial between his teeth he trotted back toward Duval House.

“Why are we doing this?” whispered Cutter Andrews to his girlfriend, Hussey Paine, as the buzzards of destiny swooped in low and slow. The birds made lazy downward spirals as they searched for the recently deceased. Hussey and Cutter's two motionless bodies lay supine on the edge of Lake Helen. “I thought we outgrew buzzard bingo years ago.”

The lake separated the little villages of Cassandra and Lake Helen, Florida. Cassandra, a sleepy little town tucked away amid the mangroves and palm trees, between Orlando and Daytona, was a close knit community. It consisted of a hotel, a tourist center, and the largest collection of psychics, spiritual healers and mediums east of Berkley.

“One last time before we go,” Hussey whispered back. “I need some more of those little purple mushrooms that grow out of the vulture puke. Now shut up and lie still, they're circling in.”

It is a known fact that when frightened, buzzards vomit. Hussey and Cutter had played this game since they were kids. Growing up in rural Florida you had to find your fun where you could, so they had made a game out of lying very still on the banks of Lake Helen, pretending to be carrion until the buzzards circled and landed. Once the buzzards had settled, and mustered enough courage to approach their potential meal, Hussey and Cutter would spring up, screaming and waving their arms, startling the birds trying to make them puke.

The lake, bathwater warm, was good for a quick dip if they failed to dodge the regurgitating raptors.