The Randy Romance Novelist (5 page)

“Dead,” was all Susan said.

“What?!” I called out. “Gladys is dead?” My stomach revolted and I instantly felt ill.

Susan waved her hands in front of face, fending off her tears. “Not yet, but she will be when the office manager finds out the price it will cost to clean out all the air ducts in the building.”

I gripped my chest and took a deep breath, sighing with relief. “Jesus, Susan, you can’t go and say people have died when they really haven’t.”

“I didn’t say that,” Susan countered, lying to my face.

“Yes, you did. You said Gladys was dead.”

“Metaphorically, dear, honestly. Read the tone.”

Huffing and not wanting to fight with her any more, I asked, “Is Gladys here?”

Waving toward Gladys’s office, Susan responded with exasperation. “She’s out there.”

Blowing past the plastic drapes, I found my way to Gladys’s office, tripping over tubes, pipes, brooms, and cords the entire way.

“Gladys?” I called out, not really able to see from all the drapes hanging down. I pushed past them and dust floated down from the ceiling and onto my freshly lint-rolled pants. Perfect. “Gladys, are you in here?”

“Rosie, is that you?”

“Yes, where are you?” I coughed from the dust, trying to push past the drapes, using Gladys’s voice as a guide.

“Under my desk.” Her voice was weak, and I feared that she could possibly be crying.

I placed my purse on a chair and crawled on the floor until I found Gladys tucked under her desk, rocking back and forth, holding a stuffed cat to her chest.

“Gladys, what’s going on?”

She looked up at me, and just as I had guessed, she had tears streaming down her face. “They took them all.”

“Who took what all?” I asked, not making much sense to my own ears.

“The landlord, he took all the cats.” An ear piercing screech escaped her lips, sending chills down my spine. “They’re gone, Rosie. They’re all gone!”

The cats were gone. I couldn’t help the small shot of glee that shot through my body at the announcement of no more cats. No more fur balls in my soup. No more puke piles on my desk. No more stealing letters from my keyboard. No more death stares from the hallway.

AND NO MORE SIR LICKS-A-LOT!!!!!

Mentally, I did a happy dance, trying not to show Gladys how happy I was about this new information. Instead, I put on a somber look and patted Gladys on the shoulder.

“I’m so sorry to hear that; I know how much those cats meant to you.”

“You should have seen it, Rosie. What a disaster it all was. The incessant crying of the cats. My heart could barely handle it. Animal Control came in here and took all the cats, every single one of them. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

“Me either,” I sighed, pleased with my acting skills. “I’ll miss those furballs. If I could, I would have taken them all home.”

It was never a bad idea to suck up to your boss, to feel what they were feeling. Brownie points were always warranted in the workplace.

“You would have?” Gladys asked, hope and appreciation in her eyes.

“Yes, of course. They were like family to me.”

With cat-like reflexes, Gladys poked her head out from under the desk and looked around her office. Apparently satisfied with the vacancy, she ejected from the ground and ran to the closet that rested across from her desk. I watched her dance on her toes as she waved for me to join her.

Frightened about what was about to happen to me, and also curious, I joined her at the closet and waited for her next move.

“I need your help,” she whispered.

“With what?” I reciprocated the whisper, knowing full well no one is even within earshot of us.

As if she were Indiana Jones revealing a treasure from his man-purse, she opened her closet door and revealed a cat carrier. From a distance, it looked empty, which confused me greatly, since all the cats were confiscated by animal control.

“What’s that?” I asked, looking closer into the cat carrier, just in time for Sir Licks-a-Lot himself to leap to the front of the cage, hissing and spitting his mini kitty venom, scaring the cuticles right off of me. “Holy hell!” I screamed, turning in circles and waving my hands about.

“Shh, Rosie, they’ll hear you.”

My heart was pounding a mile a minute while Sir Licks-a-Lot was trying to entice me to come closer with his claw through the cage. Gladys had her lips against my ear, trying to soothe me by shushing loudly, as if I were a baby needing to be calmed. For some odd reason, it worked.

Steadying myself, I asked, “Who will hear me?”

“The owners.” Gladys looked around her office, paranoia evident in her appearance. “I think they bugged the place. They weren’t happy about the amount of furballs in the vents. It’s going to cost them a lot of money to clean everything out. Serves them right, though; I heard they donate money to places like the soup kitchen.”

I thought about that for a second before I answered. “Um, what’s wrong with giving money to the soup kitchen? That’s actually really nice of them.”

“Really? Not when they charge five ninety-nine for a bucket of piss water they claim is chicken broth.”

“What?” I asked. “The soup kitchen doesn’t charge. Are you talking about Soup and Bowl, the restaurant five blocks down?”

“Have you been there? It’s disgusting. I refuse to support such an establishment.”

Many things came to the forefront of my mind, but I blocked them away because I didn’t want to get into a fight with my boss about the soup kitchen. It wasn’t worth it.

“Can I ask what you’re doing with Sir Licks-a-Lot? I thought Animal Control took all of the cats.”

“They thought they did. I was able to stuff Sir Licks-a-Lot away before they could find him. I need to ask you a favor.”

And just like that, I knew exactly what the next few words were going to be coming out of Gladys’s mouth. Dread and self-hatred filled my bones as I watched her old lady eyes become full with tears and a slight ounce of hope.

Oh, crap.

“What kind of favor?” I reluctantly asked.

“I need you to take Sir Licks-a-Lot home with you. My landlord won’t allow cats in the building, so I can’t take him or else I would.”

“My landlord doesn’t either,” I answered with fake defeat and a lift of my hand, really trying to show off my disappointment. Thank God for New York City living and strict apartment rules.

“Yes, he does,” Gladys returned, shaking me out of my moment of glory from my quick thinking tongue. “I looked up your address this morning and called your landlord. I had to pay a hefty pet fee of five hundred dollars, but it’s all set with your landlord.”

Crap!

My mind started sifting through a Rolodex of excuses. I mentally tried them out before I said them out loud because right now, I would say just about anything to avoid taking Satan’s feline back to my apartment with me.

Excuse: He won’t match the ambiance of the apartment.

Nope—he would actually go perfectly.

Excuse: We go to bed at seven at night, so our sleep schedule probably won’t sync up.

Nope—cats sleep all day every day, idiot . . . that’s when they’re not plotting your death.

Excuse: Henry’s allergic.

Nope—She’s seen him in the office multiple times.

Excuse: I don’t know anything about cats.

Nope—I know TOO much about cats.

I had nothing. Just one last lousy excuse . . .

“I don’t think I’m in a financially stable place to be able to provide for Sir Licks-a-Lot’s needs at this time.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Gladys waved her hand to brush my excuse away. “I will increase your salary by three hundred dollars bi-weekly to take care of him.”

That was one hell of a significant raise; how could a girl turn that down?

“You’re the only one I trust, Rosie. Please do this for me. I already had a courier drop off cat supplies and some of Lickey’s favorite toys. Say yes.”

Right before me, Gladys’s eyes transformed into giant saucers, begging and pleading with me to do this “tiny” little favor.

I turned to the crate and stared Sir Licks-a-Lot down, trying to form some kind of bond with the cretin. His yellow eyes didn’t blink as his whiskers twitched from his paw running over them in a deranged kind of way. I gulped, and thought maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. He’s just a cat . . .

***

“Go ahead, scratch the sofa one more time; I dare you,” I called out, holding a spray bottle with both hands and pointing it right at the culprit. It’d been five hours since I gathered all my things at the office and hauled “Lickey” across Midtown and back to my apartment. Just like Gladys said, she had a large box of cat items waiting for me at the apartment full of catnip, scratchers, a litter box, a pooper scooper, feeding bowls, and of course, smelly wet cat food.

The taxi ride back to the apartment was a real treat. One would have assumed I was slowly killing him inside his crate, maybe twisting his leg off, by the crazed meows popping out of his mouth. The cab driver kept looking in his rearview mirror until I told him the cat was in heat and searching for someone to bang her. That warranted a middle claw from Sir Licks-a-Lot, and I think that comment was the reason why I’d been dealing with kitty tornado ever since I got home. Apparently, he didn’t like to be called a she . . . noted!

With one sock on my foot, hair tossed into a side pony—not by my doing—and clothes askew, I found myself fighting an epic battle of human versus feline, skin versus whiskers, claws versus hands. We fought for our freedom, for our rights in the apartment, for the upper hand in this creepy ménage of furball and homosapien. I battled with him incessantly about his boundaries, his designated space, and mostly on how many times I could squirt a cat before he got it through his teeny tiny cat brain that he was not to scratch the damn couch.

His paw was midair as I screamed, “Do it!” My hands shook, ready to squirt the little bastard across the apartment. I could feel sweat start to trickle down my back in anticipation of a squirt-a-thon that consisted of me screaming like a banshee, squirting the cat, while he ran around in circles, trying to avoid Hurricane Rosie.

Right when I thought he was going to lay his paw on the couch, Henry came through the front door, scaring the jerk away from the bullseye I had aimed between his eerie yellow eyes.

“Hey, love,” Henry started to say, until he stopped and took in my appearance. Shutting the door, he said, “Whatcha doin’?” The sexy side smile of his eased the tension in my shoulders just enough for me to lower the water sprayer.

“He’s here,” I shout-whispered, looking around, waiting for him to attack. “Cover my six.” I backed up, searching the room for an orange blob ready to pounce, but my eyes deceived me, sending me into a full-on water attack on an orange pillow resting on the floor from one of the run arounds I shared with Sir Licks-a-Lot.

Henry carefully set his work bag down and looked around the living room, while lowering my squirting hands away from the pillow. “Who’s here?”

Crouch walking, I inched closer to Henry, scanning the room, waiting for Sir Licks-a-Lot to pop out. “Lucifer himself. He’s here.” I felt the crazy in my eyes starting to surface, the day of chasing him around, plucking him off the furniture, and screaming bloody murder to make him stop his incessant crying had finally taken over. I was losing it.

“Love, you’re scaring me. What are you talking—?”

Mrrrrrrrrrrooooooowwwwww!

From behind the curtains, Sir Licks-a-Lot pounced from the ground and into the air, fanning his body out to impersonate a flying squirrel, propelling him across the living room and onto Henry’s chest.

“What the fuck?” Henry screamed as he spun in circles, trying to get rid of the phantom clawer. “I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”

Spiraling around the room, Henry pulled on Sir Licks-a-Lot, trying to forcefully remove the carrot-colored clinger.

“Get off my man, you orange pussy!”

I lifted the bottle of water, aimed the best I could, and sprayed water rapidly while screaming for Sir Licks-a-Lot to declaw himself from Henry.

“Why am I getting wet? Rosie, aim at the cat, for the love of God, aim at the cat.”

The struggle escalated, the twisting was out of control, and for a brief moment I wondered if the end of this battle would result in a hospital visit.

“Stop spinning!”

Immediately, Henry listened to my demand, giving me the perfect moment to throw down my nuclear weapon. I pulled off the cap to the water sprayer and chucked the entire bottle at Henry, just in time for Sir Licks-a-Lot to jump off him, resulting in Henry taking the brunt of the water straight to the noggin.

In shock, Henry stood in front of me, drenched from head to toe, with his hands stretched out and a look of utter confusion on his face. Next to him sat Sir Licks-a-Lot, cupping the water on the ground and slowly bringing his paw up to his mouth to lap up a tasty Henry flavored drink, as if our entryway floor was his own personal watering hole.

Henry wiped his face and then asked, “Love, can I ask what that thing is doing in our apartment?”

This was one conversation I wasn’t looking forward to. I knew Henry wasn’t going to be happy about our new roommate.

“Honestly, I don’t know how it happened. Last thing I can remember is Gladys looking up at me, begging me to take Sir Licks-a-Lot home.”

“But why?”

“All the cats were removed, something about furballs in the air ducts. She needed a place for him to stay.”

“And you were chosen for that?” Henry asked, obviously irritated over the new resident in the building. The feeling was mutual.

“I was the only one who could allow cats in their apartment. She called the landlord, Henry. What was I supposed to do?”

“Say no.” We both watched Sir Licks-a-Lot rub up against Henry’s pants, marking his territory. If I wasn’t so scared of the feline, I would let him know that Henry wasn’t available for marking, but honestly, I was too scared I would lose an eyeball, so I kept my distance.

“I couldn’t. She cornered me and then offered me three hundred dollars more a paycheck to take care of him. I didn’t have a choice. Please don’t be mad at me.”