Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  “What about your eye? Please tell me that bandage is just for protection.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I probably won’t know for sure until it comes off in a couple of days, but it felt pretty bad by the time I got here and everything on that side was getting blurrier with every passing second. And . . . darker. The look on the doctor’s face wasn’t promising, either.” She reached over to the side table where her eye patch was laying and carefully put it on over the bandage. “How does it look?”

  I tried to smile, but I wasn’t going to kid her. There was still plenty of bandage showing. The gauze was wrapped all around that side of her head like she was a Revolutionary soldier from the Spirit of ’76 painting. All she needed was a flute. It was then that she started to cry. “It’ll be all right, Sylvia,” I said, not feeling at all like it would be. I was on a roll of telling people the wrong things today.

  “He was going to eat her!” She sobbed. She wasn’t crying over her eye at all. She was crying over the cat. “He was going to EAT her!” she repeated. “I know he was! I want to keep her, Helena. I want to take her away from this horrible place.”

  “It’s a her?”

  “Yes. The doctor here is spaying her, too. I paid them 500 American dollars to take care of her right away. She’ll probably be okay to move in an hour or so.”

  “I don’t know if we can get her past customs,” I had to admit.

  “I’m taking her,” she said simply. Her tears dried up and she became rock hard Sylvia again. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “Dinny might not want another cat on the plane.” She just looked at me like I was stupid. If Dinny had a problem with cats on the plane, there wouldn’t be cats on the plane. I caved. “I’ll talk to the authorities. I’m sure we can pull some strings. What do you want to tell the others?”

  “About the cat or the eye?”

  “Both.”

  “Nothing, if I can, about the eye. The truth, more or less, about the cat.”

  “How are you going to hide all that?” I nodded at her head.

  She had an answer ready. I could tell she’d been considering what to say ever since we spoke on the phone. “We can take most of the bandages off when we leave. I can hide the eye pad with the patch, and cover the burns with makeup. No one else needs to know.”

  The idea of a lengthy deception about this didn’t agree with me. “Nitro will be doing our annual physicals next month. He’s going to notice.” It would be her first annual physical, however. Maybe he would assume it had been that way all along, if he, like the others, had not recognized Sylvia’s eye switching trick.

  “I’ll come clean then, I promise. I’m not ready to now. Will you back me up?” I hesitated, and she pleaded with her one good eye. “Please, Helena. I’ll tell you a secret.”

  Okay, so we’re in grade school now, I thought. But you know what? It works. “Okay. As long as you promise to tell next month, I’ll help you cover it up until then. What’s the secret?”

  She fingered the bed sheets. “Remember when you first asked about my eye patch, and I told you Miss Chiff put me on your team to judge your observational skills?”

  “Sure. And from what I can tell, I’m the only one who noticed you were changing sides. I guess we need to work on that.”

  “Well, that’s not entirely true.” She paused, and I waited for more. “I wasn’t judging observational skills. I was judging communication skills.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone knew the eye patch was a ploy. Not just you, though you were the first. By the end of the first month, everyone had come to me about it. But not one of you said anything to any of the others. That’s what I reported to Miss Chiff a couple of weeks ago.”

  It’s a bad feeling knowing you were reported on to a superior. I wasn’t sure if my team was in trouble or not. “You told us not to,” I said defensively. “At least, I’m assuming you told the others the same as me. To keep it to ourselves, right? Confidentiality is a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Not for a team. Not for something like this. I was new. You should have been evaluating me, discussing me. Miss Chiff’s eye patch game should have made you all distrust me and forced you to remove me from the team. But you didn’t. Because no one knew that everyone else knew the truth. You were protecting me instead of protecting the team.” I could see her point, but still didn’t have a clear feeling on whether the results of the game were good or bad. Miss Chiff could just as easily have been interested in our loyalty to each other, or even in Sylvia’s ability to act convincingly. Only Miss Chiff knew the real reasons behind it all, and I was sure she would never tell us.

  “What do you think Miss Chiff will do?”

  She shrugged. “She can’t fire you. The world needs every CURDS team it has.” She shifted in the bed a little. “I think the plan was for me to leave the team, though. Remember, she expected you to distrust me. She probably wanted me to do the same thing with B Team and C Team. Now . . . ? I don’t know.”

  My back straightened. “Wait a minute. If you’re studying our communication skills, what does it say that you want to keep this injury secret from the team? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?”

  A glimmer of vulnerability passed through her eye. “Maybe so. But how will they see me once they know I went through all this for a cat? I have an image to maintain. I’m cold, remember? I’m an unemotional rock with her mind 100% on the job at all times.”

  “They’d see you as human,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  She took a deep breath. “All right, then, consider this a test. I’m trying to make sure I can trust you. You promised to keep it to yourself. I need to know you can, or maybe I don’t want to join your team.” It was an idle threat and we both knew it.

  “You’re still contradicting yourself. Besides, how do I know you aren’t still trying to get me to tell the team all about it for you, like you were with the eye patch switcheroo?”

  She grinned, and her one good eyelid lowered. “You don’t.”

  I told her the deal stood. I wouldn’t tell, but if she didn’t do it when the physicals came up, I would.

  I stayed with Sylvia until the doctor came to release her a couple of hours later. I helped her take off most of the bandages. As the last of it came off, I found myself saying, “Oh, Sylvy!” The skin around her eye was raw, but the worst was the eye itself. The bright emerald green had turned into an ugly, milky, watery mess. I could see a short indentation on the surface and was pretty sure that a piece of the lid had become embedded and been extracted. I helped her situate the eye patch, and then borrowed makeup from a nurse and gently applied it to her tender face.

  “I’m lucky, you know,” she said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “If I hadn’t been wearing the eye patch, I would have lost both eyes. I’d be blind now.” I told her I agreed with her, though I didn’t really, as I finished applying the makeup. Lucky would be escaping the cleaning solution completely. Lucky would be not running over the cat so she had no reason to be in Chinatown at all. After about twenty minutes of trial and error, she bore a passing likeness to her former self. She put on her clothes from the closet, and we went in search of the ersatz cat ward with Officer Champlain following like a lost puppy. Poor guy. This was really no job for an officer of the French police, but we still needed him to get us to the plane.

  We finally found the doctor who had promised to take care of the cat and were able to communicate with her in very broken French and English….Frenglish, I suppose. And then I met the new cat. She was smaller than both Toilet Bowl and Backwash, jet black nearly all over. A streak of white went from her neck to between her front legs, as if it were a white necktie. Her tail was straighter now, though she didn’t move it much. And there was a tiny scar just below her little pink nose where the doctor had shaved to treat the chemical burn, which had caused part of her skin there to pucker. She looked at us,
but was still too weak from the spaying surgery to do more than mew gently. We wrapped her in a blanket and the hospital provided a carrier that they’d managed to find somewhere for us to take her.

  Officer Champlain dropped us at the airport and was able to resume his former duties with a salute to us. We got the cat through customs with barely any issues after showing our CURDS badges. The rest of the team was on the plane waiting for us, and Dinny told me that all the confiscated cheese was in the cargo hold. I had a private moment of silence for Mr. Ferruz, who didn’t ask for what happened to him.

  When Dinny saw the new cat, she squealed with delight. “Oh my! Look at the little darling!” The little darling gave a weak mew and retreated to the back of the carrier. She took the carrier from Sylvia’s arms and peered through the front grate. There was never any doubt.

  “I think you should pick a name for her, Dinny. I did T.B., the team did Backwash. It’s your turn.” I said.

  “Seriously?” Asked Dinny, meeting everyone’s gaze. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone, but they backed me up, anyway. Even Sylvia, who had kind of a claim on the cat, deferred to my suggestion. Dinny took the responsibility very seriously. “Hmmmm. I’ll have to think on this one. See her in action, but she can’t come out of the carrier until the others stop hissing at her. It could be awhile.”

  “I understand,” I replied. “No hurry.”

  Dinny took the cat carrier to the front compartment and Sylvia and I went into the cabin to take our seats for takeoff. Amid all the confusion with the new cat, no one questioned Sylvia’s appearance and she quickly claimed fatigue, took her seat, buckled in, and rolled over to face the window.

  I went over to check on the twins. Nitro was there, taking their temperature. “They have a slight fever. I’m continuing the antibiotics. I hope we get some R&R now. They need it.”

  “No we don’t,” they said simultaneously.

  “Yes, you do,” said Billings and Nitro simultaneously.

  I took my seat and buckled in for the ride home. I slept like the proverbial log. I dreamed I was riding a bike through the streets of Paris, but this time I was good at it. I zipped around puddles, circled around fountains, bumped down cement staircases, and popped wheelies like I was the Lone Ranger on Silver. I was one with the bike. It responded to my commands as if it were part of me. My hands held the handlebars lightly, barely nudging it one way and the next, around pedestrians, under the Arc de Triomphe and weaving through the supporting feet of the Eiffel Tower fast as the wind. Passersby watched in amazement, applauding as I went past and shouting praises in my wake. But then the front wheel hit a small pebble just so and the bike flew out from under me. I landed flat on my back, and the bike landed on top of me, the handlebars crashing into my chest.

  I woke to find T.B. sitting up in royal Egyptian pose on my upper abdomen, his front feet close together directly on my sternum. He stared at me. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but everyone else seemed to be asleep. The plane was still in flight. “Lay down, T.B.,” I said quietly. I patted my upper breast. “Come on, sweetie. Lay down.” He continued to sit and stare at me in an accusing fashion. “What?” He’d never done this before. Had I grown horns? Had my eyeballs turned into mice? I didn’t know, but I was still tired, and I wasn’t going to sleep again with him doing step one of CPR on my chest in a continuous loop. I didn’t like to shoo him, but shoo him I did as I rolled to one side. He jumped down, then jumped up onto the upper edge of my headrest, stretched out, and rolled onto my forehead. Ah, that was better. I fell peacefully back to sleep.

  I woke next to a resounding chorus of “EW!” At some point, T.B. had left my head. He was nowhere to be seen as I got up and looked around. I heard what sounded like a stampede coming from the upper deck as the three cats chased invisible mice, or each other, around the conference room. There was plenty of light now and I felt more refreshed. I found the rest of the team huddled around the twins and Nitro was doing something with them. I leaped up and went over. “Nitro, are they okay?”

  “They will be.” He had removed their bandage and the wound was yellow and filled with pus. Pus dripped down onto a pile of paper towel on the floor, as he wiped the wound clean with an alcohol soaked towelette. Neither Agnes nor Avis was watching him. Both heads were turned away in opposite directions. Billings and Sylvia were looking, but grimacing, and Sir Haughty and Roxy had turned their backs on the whole affair. “Small infection. I’m draining it and I’ll switch them to a stronger antibiotic. That should definitely kick it out.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I said.

  “What is?” He really had no idea. “You mean the pus?”

  “Uh, yep.”

  “Nothing disgusting about it,” he said. “It’s the human body’s warning system. That’s all. Billions of tiny microscopic Paul Reveres shouting that the British are coming. It’s fascinating.”

  “You know he didn’t call them British, right?” I said.

  Sir Haughty, who had actually EATEN worm cheese, turned, but kept his gaze at me and above the medical procedure taking place in front of him. “You’re quite right, Helena. They were the Regulars.”

  “Really?” Roxy didn’t seem to believe it. “Then why do all the schoolbooks say ‘the British are coming?’”

  “Because they were written long after the fact by people who had no frame of reference,” I explained. “Think about it, Roxy. This was pre War of Independence. Nearly EVERYONE, with the exception of the African slaves, considered themselves British subjects, even if they were in rebellion. So he shouted ‘the Regulars are coming’ to let people know the ‘regular army’ was attacking, as opposed to the local militias.”

  Well, if nothing else, this little factoid got everyone’s mind off of the pus long enough for Nitro to clean it up. Haughty added, “I also heard that your Paul Revere was not the only rider that night, and that, in fact, he hid in pubs for the most part while 20 other men risked their lives to warn the populace, and specifically Sam Adams and John Hancock, who were able to escape hanging thanks to the rider network. They gave credit to their friend Paul Revere, though William Dawes also made the ride. They made a coward into an American hero.”

  Badger took exception to that. “Hey, now! Don’t go besmirching a national icon like that. Show some respect, you ungrateful git.”

  “I’m British, sir,” Sir Haughty replied. “Exactly why should I be grateful for your so-called hero?”

  I was about to tell them to take it outside, but I remembered we were on a plane. “Boys, drop it. It’s not that important.”

  “But –“ they protested together.

  I answered that with a disapproving glare, and they shut up. Nitro scooped up the toxic paper towels and went to the back of the room to toss them into the trash. “Fever is already going down,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Just a little health hiccup.”

  “Thank you, Nitro,” I said. “Girls? How are you feeling?”

  “Not bad. That stung a bit, but it feels better,” said Agnes.

  The sight of the pus reminded me about the bug smear on my helmet. So I took the opportunity to retrieve it from the locker room and headed to the bathroom with it. Now that the messy towels were gone, the rest of the team, except for Sylvia, gathered supportively around the twins, who began asking questions about the Paris adventure, wanting to know everything they had missed. I ducked into the first bathroom where their voices became only a muffled, indistinguishable hum, and went about scrubbing the now dry, crusty bug guts from my helmet visor. I came out a few minutes later with it sparkling clean. I’d even spritzed the interior with some air freshener. I put it back in my locker and went back to my seat. There would have been some very cathartic closure if not for the ghost of Rennet Butler sitting in the middle of my brain.

  “Are we landing soon?” asked Avis. “It feels like we’ve been on this plane forever.”

  Dinny appeared to announce that landing procedures were about to begin. We all snapped
our seats into upright positions and strapped in. Even Agnes and Avis sat up now, though slowly and gently.

  It was so good to be back in the States, and specifically our beloved Washington DC. The DC CDC came and retrieved the stash of cheese to be destroyed. As they unloaded the cargo onto waiting trucks, I met Miss Chiff at the concourse. “Very well done, Ms. Montana. That’s quite a lot of cheese you recovered.”

  “Well, it’s probably not ALL Uber,” I said. “If you need an accurate accounting, you’ll need to tell them to test every package. He was a counterfeiter and may have been hiding Uber cheese among clean cheeses. The cheddar is almost definitely Uber, though. It was in the process of being labeled when we confiscated it.”

  “You’ll be glad to know that I’m giving you two full weeks in HQ,” she said, keeping her voice low. The rest of the team were coming off the plane, carrying their personal belongings, and heading to the waiting shuttle. “With three of your members on the DL, I simply can’t send you after Rennet Butler, right now.”

  “Three?” Of course she knew about the twins. How did she know about Sylvia?

  “Really, Helena, you don’t think we didn’t know about Miss Pendragon, did you? I hate to lose an operative, of course, but she clearly belongs on your team now.” I was about to say something, but she raised a hand to stop me. “Yes, I know about the cat, as well. Did you really think your badges alone got you through customs?”

  “You?” I asked. She nodded. “Thank you, Miss Chiff. It means so much to Sylvia. And to me.”

  “You can’t keep secrets from me, you know. You should be used to that by now. Don’t worry, despite what happened I fully support Miss Pendragon’s actions. I can’t have you picking up a cat in every port, mind you, but it really was the best thing to do in this instance. Our investigators have already discovered that the owner of the laundry has a sister who owns a nearby restaurant, known to have cat on the menu. It’s almost a certainty he was trying to obtain the cat for her. We had to check. We can’t have our team members being accused of catnapping.” She paused, hearing her words again in her head. “Perhaps I should rephrase that.” But she didn’t rephrase it at all. With that, she dismissed the entire subject. “I’m putting B team on Butler for now. We don’t even have him pinpointed. All we have is the word of a withdrawal-ridden addict that he was in England at all, and no idea where in England it was. B team’s specialty is undercover work, yours is confine and capture. Go back to HQ and let your team heal.”