by Sofie Kelly
He nodded.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my voice suddenly husky with the sting of tears. I’d wanted to hug Oren, but somehow I knew that would be wrong.
Looking up above the doorway I felt the prickle of tears again. Oren was quiet and gentle and wonderfully talented. Everything the library had needed done that the general contractor couldn’t do, Oren had done. He’d made the new railing. He’d hand-turned trim identical to the original. He’d done the painting, carefully matching the colors to the original 1912 paint.
He never said very much, and watching him over the past several months I had the feeling that Oren had been broken somehow. He made me think of a shattered vase or cup. You carefully glue the pieces back together, so carefully that none of the cracks show. It looks beautiful again and it holds tea or water and roses from the garden, but somehow it’s not quite the same. Something, somehow, is different.
I heard voices then, coming from the back of the library where the new digital card catalogue and computers were going to be located. Voices too loud for the library. Now that the major work on the building was finished we were open to the public again, but it was usually quiet in the early evening.
I walked past the new shelving units, ready for books. Susan, one of my staff members, stood with her back to me, next to the boxes of computers waiting for the new electrical outlets to be installed so they could be set up and connected.
“—do understand how frustrating this is,” I heard her say in her patient-mom voice. Susan had two preschoolers at home and nothing rattled her.
“My dear, there is no conceivable way that you could fathom the depth of my frustration,” the man standing opposite her said. He made a sweeping gesture with both hands. Since he was well over six feet tall the movement looked very theatrical, and maybe that was what he’d intended. “How am I supposed to work under these insufferable conditions?”
I came out from the row of bookshelves and moved to stand next to Susan. There were two pencils poking out of her Pebbles Flintstone updo. She gave a small sigh and an even smaller smile.
“Susan, is there a problem?” I asked.
“Mr. Easton was hoping to use one of our computers to send some e-mail,” she said. “His BlackBerry isn’t working.”
Easton. Of course. Gregor Easton. The well-known composer and conductor was the guest artist for the Wild Rose Summer Music Festival at the Stratton Theater. He’d been in town practicing for about a week.
“Mr. Easton, I’m sorry,” I said. “As you can see, our computer system isn’t ready yet.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, making another flamboyant gesture with his arm. “And you would be?” He looked me over, taking in my plain white T-shirt, cropped yoga pants and messenger bag. I slipped the bag off my shoulder and reached up to set it on top of the metal cabinet we were using to hold most of the old card files. “I’m Kathleen Paulson,” I said, offering my hand. “I’m the head librarian.”
I probably didn’t look like I should be in charge. I’ve always looked younger than my age, and my mother promised that once I was over thirty I’d be happy about that. Sometimes I was. This time I would have liked to look older and a little more imposing—hard to do when you’re only five and a half feet tall with a half-grown-out pixie haircut that sticks out in all the wrong places.
Easton had to be in his early seventies, but his grip was strong and his hand was smooth and uncallused. A lot smoother than mine.
“Miss Paulson, I’m sorry to say your library is in chaos.”
I couldn’t help a glance around. The end wall with the stained-glass window had been reinforced and the window itself repaired and cleaned. Most of the new shelves were filled with books. The walls had been plastered and painted. The circulation desk was almost finished, and Oren’s sun seemed to shine over everything. So many people had spent so many hours on this building. It looked wonderful.
I swallowed to hide my annoyance.
He continued. “According to the guidebook in my hotel suite the library is supposed to provide Internet service.”
“I apologize for that,” I said. “The guide arrived early and our computers arrived late.”
“But your computers are here now,” he said. “Why couldn’t one of them be connected?”
Connected? To what? Did he really expect us to unpack one of the computers right now and magically get it up and running so he could check his schedule?
Susan and I exchanged looks. Her mouth was a straight, serious line, but the eyes behind her glasses were laughing.
Easton gave me a practiced celebrity-greeting-the little-people smile. Unpack one of those computers just for him? When pigs fly, I thought.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a pig that suddenly launched itself onto the conductor’s head. It was a cat.
My cat. Owen.
2
Carry Tiger to Mountain
For a moment Owen perched on top of Easton’s head, tail twitching, like some sort of kitty Davy Crockett hat. Before any of us could move, he leaped over to the top of one of the bookshelves, shook himself and gave us a wide-eyed stare. What was he doing at the library? How the heck had he gotten into my bag with my noticing?
Easton bellowed a word I’d heard before but never in a library, and swiped at his head. “Miss Paulson, your library is infested by vermin! I have been attacked by a rodent!”
“That’s not a rodent. That’s a cat,” Susan pointed out, oh, so not helpfully.
“Mr. Easton, I’m so sorry,” I began. I wasn’t sure whether to check his head for claw marks or rescue Owen from the shelf and stash him in my office.
“A cat?” Easton roared. He glared at Owen. “No wonder this building has vermin. If you believe that mangy, unkempt creature is capable of controlling an infestation of rodents, well, look at that—that thing!” He jabbed his finger in Owen’s direction.
Big mistake. Owen let out a loud yowl of indignation. He hissed at Easton and spat for good measure. Then he jumped to the floor, flicked his tail at the conductor—what I guessed was the kitty version of giving the finger—and stalked away. I needed to get him back in the bag and into my office as quickly as possible, but first I needed to deal with Gregor Easton.
I glanced at Susan, who wouldn’t meet my look. Her lips were twitching. Oh, Susan, please don’t laugh, I thought. It was going to take a lot to soothe Easton’s ruffled feathers without Susan giggling and making things worse. His face was an alarming shade of red and his thick hair was standing on end. I couldn’t see any scratches, so I hoped that meant Owen had kept his claws sheathed.
“Miss Paulson!” Easton’s voice boomed around the small space. “This library is woefully inadequate. Your service is simply not acceptable. There is no Internet connection, despite its being promised. And your selection of major newspapers is lamentable.”
Our newspaper selection? Where had that come from?
He continued. “And you have a vermin problem that you have tried—unsuccessfully, I must point out—to conceal by bringing in an obviously inbred alley cat, which probably spends most of its time rutting with the town population of female felines.”
I took a deep breath. Owen didn’t spend his time chasing female cats. He spent most of his time chasing the birds in the backyard and chewing the head off Fred the Funky Chicken. Information I probably shouldn’t share with Easton. I thought of what my mother’s advice would be in this situation: “Act it, darling. Act it.”
I stepped forward. “Mr. Easton, you have my profound apologies.” He wasn’t the only one who could sound pretentious. “Owen is my cat and he must have climbed into my bag before I left the house. I had no idea. I assure you he wasn’t chasing anything. We don’t have a vermin problem here at the library.” Well, not anymore, we didn’t.
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 si
phon 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.
