The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas (21 page)

I stopped at the end of our lane and waited for a break in traffic on Midnight Pass Road. As I turned, I caught sight of a white convertible half a mile away pulling out of a private lane like mine. It wasn’t something I paid attention to, just one of those subliminal details that drivers notice.

I zipped to a Walgreens on Tamiami Trail and bought two hot water bottles for Cora. They were cuter than I remembered hot water bottles being. Sort of snuggly, actually, so I bought two for myself. I thought they might come in handy some chilly night when I had cramps or a backache or cold feet. Now that it looked like I would be sleeping alone for the rest of my life, I figured my feet might need something to keep them warm.

With the hot water bottles in tow, I sped off around the marina and its moored boats toward Cora’s condo. Waiting at a red light, I spotted another white convertible way back in a line of cars behind me. It could have been a Jaguar like Briana’s, but it was too far back to tell for sure. Lots of convertibles in Sarasota, many of them white. Nothing to pay attention to, really, but I sort of did. As I left the marina behind and followed Tamiami Trail to Cora’s condo building, I noticed that the convertible hadn’t turned to go over the bridge to Longboat Key or St. Armands or Lido Key. When I turned onto the short lane to Cora’s condo, though, the convertible went straight ahead on Tamiami Trail, headed north. I felt a ridiculous relief. Nothing like being involved in a murder investigation to make a person start imagining being followed.

Every time I look up at the condo building where Cora lives, I imagine a bunch of architects coming back from an inspiring but drunken weekend in Venice before they designed it. Instead of old-world charm, the building is tarted up so it resembles a giant wedding cake decorated by kindergartners let loose with frosting cones. Cupolas perch in weird places, columns soar without any purpose, little fountains spurt water from the lips of cherubic gargoyles. I get off balance just looking at it.

I pulled up under the porte cochere, and a valet trotted out to take my Bronco away. Well, he was too old to trot, but he moved as fast as possible. With so many retirees in Sarasota, most of our valet parkers and supermarket bag-boys are over seventy. I suspect that most of them have been pushed to it by wives who grew weary of them constantly underfoot. The Sarasota joke is that wives committed to their husbands for life, but not for lunch.

The valet who parked my car was new, so we didn’t waste time chatting. I told him I wouldn’t be long, grabbed the bag of hot water bottles, and scooted through wide glass doors that slid apart when they felt me coming. I like that about posh places. Even the mechanical objects make you feel special. The lobby was crowded with youthful gray-haired people headed to golf courses or tennis courts or movie theaters. Old people are the only people who have the time to enjoy themselves. Gives me something to look forward to.

The concierge waved at me from her French provincial desk and picked up her phone to alert Cora that I was on my way up. I like that about posh places. Even if they know you couldn’t afford a down payment on the doormat, they treat you as respectfully as they treat the paying residents.

Most of the residents of Cora’s building are the epitome of good taste and old money, but a woman with bright red hair teased out to Jesus was waiting for the elevator. She wore high heels, tight leggings, and a drapey top made for adolescents. Cosmetic surgery had pulled out all her wrinkles and sculpted her nose thin as a baby’s finger bone, but when she turned to look at me, the eyes peering from under a fringe of red hair looked like the desperate eyes of an aging fox caught in a trap. I wondered if she’d had the surgeries hoping to snag a rich husband. Or maybe she’d had all the work solely for herself, just because she refused to look her age. Regardless of the reason, it didn’t take a makeover artist to know the woman had the same hunger for attention and love that makes unhappy teenagers draw heavy lines around their eyes and lips and trowel on thick makeup to cover every blemish. Not surprisingly, she reeked of cloying perfume.

Before the elevator opened for us, a handsome white-haired man rounded the corner. When he saw the woman, he came to a momentary stop with a look of panic on his face.

With an arch smile, she said, “There you are! You thought you could hide from me, didn’t you! But now I’ve got you! You promised to come up and have a drink with me, and I’m not letting you slip away again!”

She had a prissy voice and held her too-red lips as if they were a pouch-purse with tight-pulled strings.

I could tell the gentleman felt cornered. But he smiled grimly, too polite to tell her to get lost, and allowed her to motion him into the elevator where he backed into a corner.

I followed them in, which made the woman turn round on me as if I had intruded into a private meeting.

With a haughty look at my shorts and the Walgreens bag in my hand, she said, “What is your business here, dear?”

The man looked sharply at her.

I smiled sweetly. “I’m going to see some gentlemen on the sixth floor. They’re having a party.”

I raised the Walgreens bag and waggled it so the hot water bottles shifted around. “I’m bringing interesting goodies!”

Her smile faltered, and her hand with its red talon fingernails rose as if she might clutch my shoulder to try to become my best friend.

The man’s eyebrows rose and he pushed his spine closer to the wall, but his eyes were on the woman rather than on me. She was like a retriever on point, every inch of her quivering with excitement.

She said, “Who are they? Which apartment?”

I shook a playful finger at her. “Sorry, I’m not the kind of girl who spreads secrets.”

The elevator stopped at the sixth floor, the doors opened, and I skipped out swinging my bag of hot water bottles. She leaned out to watch me until I turned and looked pointedly at her. As she removed her hand from the door so it would close, the man behind her grinned and gave me a friendly wave. I had the feeling he knew my bag didn’t hold hot steamy sex toys. I also had the feeling he would not go with the woman to her apartment. I felt a little like a missionary who had saved somebody on the verge of making a big mistake.

For some fool reason, the woman in the elevator had made me think of Briana. Not the dyed red hair, because Briana’s hair was expertly colored and looked natural. Briana didn’t wear thick makeup, either, and I was sure that Briana was always dressed in elegant style. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d had cosmetic surgery, but only because I assumed that women in her world did, not because she looked as if she’d had some work done. When I tapped on Cora’s door, I was still trying to figure out why Briana’s face had popped into my head while I looked at the woman in the elevator.

I heard Cora’s thin voice raised to tell me to come in and forgot about Briana. Cora’s pink and green apartment is lovely. Her granddaughter bought it for her with money she made in ways Cora has never suspected. Cora was outside on the narrow terrace that runs the width of her apartment and affords a spectacular view of the bay. From her rattan peacock chair she could watch the constantly shifting blues, greens, lavenders, and grays of the bay under a clear blue sky. With natural vistas like Cora’s, people in Sarasota don’t need artwork on their walls.

With a weak smile, Cora watched me cross the apartment and step outside to the terrace. She was pale, with violet shadows under her eyes.

Alarmed, I said, “Are you okay?”

She waved a dismissive hand.

“I just did something stupid. Rose Tyler turned a hundred yesterday, and they always throw a big party for people on their hundredth. So I went down there to the ballroom, and nothing would do everybody but that I ate some of the cake. It was carrot cake, and I hate carrot cake. Always have. All that thick sweet stuff makes my teeth hurt. But I ate it anyway, because Rose will only be a hundred once, and I paid for it all night. Oh my, you wouldn’t believe! I won’t even tell you. I’m better now, but my stomach feels like it’s not sure it wants to stay with me. I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people had a problem with it, too. I think they’d let it sit out too long.”

Relieved that she only had an upset stomach, and intending to have a word with the staff about that cake, I held up the Walgreens bag.

“I got your hot water bottles. Stay put, I’ll fix them for you.”

Cora usually has the teakettle on low all the time, but today nothing was going on in her one-person kitchen. I ran water into the kettle, and while it heated I got out tea things. I wasn’t sure how hot the water for a hot water bottle should be, but I figured it shouldn’t be boiling, so I filled the bottles before the kettle sang. I didn’t fill them so much they bulged, just enough so the water made them firm. I poured the rest of the water from the kettle onto tea bags in Cora’s little Brown Betty teapot and put it and two cups and saucers on a tray. With the hot water bottles individually wrapped in clean dish towels and stacked on one end of the tray, I carried the whole business out to Cora on the terrace.

She said, “I’m sorry I don’t have any chocolate bread.”

I was sorry, too. Cora makes sinful chocolate bread in an old bread-making machine her granddaughter bought her. She won’t give her secret, but at some point in the bread-making process, she throws in bittersweet chips of chocolate. When the loaf is baked, it’s dark and dense, and the chocolate chips are still soft and oozing. It’s so good that I can’t eat it without whimpering a little bit.

I said, “I’m just glad your tummy is better.”

That was true, but as I arranged the towel-wrapped hot water bottles on Cora’s tummy and handed her a cup of tea, it occurred to me that the disappointment of no chocolate bread after I’d got used to it was almost as depressing as no sex after I’d got used to it. That’s probably why women with bad sex lives eat a lot of chocolate. If you can’t have one, you turn to the other.

Being deprived of sex
and
chocolate is the pits.

19

I took one of the peacock chairs and tried to watch Cora without looking like I was watching. Cora gets testy if she thinks people are hovering over her. Her cheeks got a little pinker as she sipped her tea, and her eyes brightened.

I said, “Do you know a woman in the building with big red hair? She wears tight leggings and high heels.”

Cora chuckled. “That would be Miss Taylor. She always comes down hard on the
Miss,
so all the men will know she’s available. Poor soul, she never has settled into her own skin.”

There it was, the thing that had reminded me of Briana.

“She was in the elevator with me. I sort of played a mean trick on her.”

Cora’s eyes brightened more when I told her how I’d given the impression I was a hooker going to a party of men on the sixth floor.

She said, “Oh my, that’s wonderful. Except now she’ll be hanging around on this floor looking for those men.”

“At least I saved that man in the elevator from her clutches.”

She rolled her eyes. “Men don’t have the sense of fishing worms. Some of the men here follow that woman around like geese chasing somebody spilling seed on the ground. He should have just told her no.”

I thought of Briana again. “I know a woman who reminds me a lot of Miss Taylor. She has something to do with fake merchandise.”

She said, “Everything is fake nowadays. Fake butter, fake cheese, fake crabmeat, fake sugar. We’ve got a new activities director here, and he’s got those colored contacts that are bigger than real eyes. His are bright turquoise. He looks like one of those people in that movie about giant people with a magic tree.”

“Avatar?”

“Just like those people! And he doesn’t seem to ever blink. He had a meeting where he told us all the new things he was planning for us, but I don’t think anybody heard what he said. We were all watching those big turquoise eyes.”

I said, “Maybe it’s not fake if everybody knows it’s fake.”

“It’s pitiful, is what it is. Everybody knows that man’s real eyes aren’t that big or that color, and everybody knows Miss Taylor isn’t a young woman, so it’s downright sad for them to think they’re fooling people.”

Thinking of all the fake people she knew had relaxed her face and removed the pain shadows from her eyes.

She said, “How’s that young man of yours? The one you let go off to New Orleans without you?”

I responded like a springing rat trap. “Cora, Ethan Crane asked me out.”

“Oh my, he’s a nice-looking man. Looks a lot like his grandfather. I always wanted to know his grandfather better. I think he liked me, too, but he was too educated for me.”

I’m always surprised to be reminded that old people are only old on the outside. Inside, they’re the same age they were when they first started life as adults.

I said, “But I’m still involved with Guidry. At least I’m supposed to be. I talked to Guidry this afternoon, and I didn’t tell him Ethan had asked me out. I meant to, but I just couldn’t.”

She turned eagle eyes on me. “Afraid to let one go before you decide if you want the other one?”

My face went hot. “It’s not like that!”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

It sounded like an awful way to treat both men, and I didn’t want to admit that Cora might be right.

She said, “Dixie, if you keep one foot in a boat and another on the dock, you’ll be stuck in one place forever. If you want the first man, then for heaven’s sake get your foot off the dock and go to New Orleans. If you can’t do that, then get your foot out of the boat and stay here.”

“I tell myself that all the time.”

She smiled, the zillions of tiny lines in her face glittering in the sunlight. “Looks to me like your head says one thing and your feet say something else. You moon around about how much you miss that young man, but you’re still here.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Things are only as complicated as we decide to make them. Do you want to go out with Ethan?”

I groaned. “Yes.”

“Then it’s simple.”

“I don’t want to hurt Guidry.”