by Mazy Morris
“They totally can’t do that to you!” Flavia said. “It must be like illegal or something!” Flavia had taken to coming over several times a week and bringing food with her. Much as I found Flavia’s voice irritating and her manner overly familiar, anything that encouraged My Lady to shower and partake of solid food was a good thing.
“Since when do bill collectors worry about what’s legal?” Ann asked.
“You should get Craig to help you,” said Flavia. “I bet he’d like totally know what to do.”
I thought this was an excellent suggestion. This counsel far exceeded the usual quality of Flavia’s advice, but My Lady didn’t bite.
“You know I’m not speaking to him,” she said.
“When are you going to be done torturing him? Why don’t you just like forgive him already?”
Flavia was on fire. I’d never heard her come out with two such intelligent suggestions in succession.
“How can I?” Ann said. “It was such a breach of trust.”
“No. It wasn’t. A breach of trust is when your boyfriend steals from you.”
Ann just looked at Flavia. I wondered how Flavia had found out about Cat Hater’s affinity for petty larceny. I was pretty sure Ann had never let it slip that Cat Hater was robbing her blind and she wasn’t doing a thing about it.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not with Jimmy anymore, am I?” Ann protested.
“But you stayed with him. Way. Too. Long. Am I right, or am I right?”
“Yes. You’re right.”
“So, even though you totally knew Jimmy jerk-face was like totally stealing from you, you didn’t even break up with him, but you like totally refuse to forgive Craig for a little thing like—”
“Conveniently forgetting you’ve been engaged is not a little thing!”
“OK! OK!”
“And I didn’t like Jimmy nearly as much as I like Craig,” Ann said.
A look of triumph spread across Flavia’s face. I didn’t understand what was going on.
“I like totally get it now!” Flavia announced.
“Get what?”
“You’re totally frig’n’ head-over-heels in love with the guy!”
“What guy?”
“Craig! You’re in love with Craig, you frig’n’ nincompoop.”
I’d never had the experience of hearing one grown woman addressed by another grown woman as a nincompoop. I could have waited a lot longer for the occurrence without the slightest tinge of regret, but that’s what one gets when one keeps company with females like Flavia.
Ann was looking very pink. Flavia hopped up and down and chortled in a self-satisfied manner. My Lady maintained a stony and dignified silence.
“Do you like want to marry Craig or something?” Flavia demanded.
“Of course not!” Ann protested. “I mean, we haven’t even been together very long—”
“I think you do! Ann wants to m-a-r-r-y C-r-a-i-g! Ann wants to m-a-r-r-y C-r-a-i-g!” Flavia chanted, in a voice more suited to a playground full of first-graders than My Lady’s private domicile.
“I don’t want to marry Craig!” My Lady protested. “And be quiet. These walls are very thin. Mrs. Jackson will hear you.”
“Whatever! You like totally don’t want to talk about this, so I’ll just shut up,” said Flavia. I don’t think Flavia intended to permanently give up the subject. I think it was more that she realized withdrawing from the skirmish to fight another day was a better tactical move. I felt a sudden affection for Flavia—despite the obnoxious playground taunts. When I tell you that later in the evening I went so far as to jump up in her lap and allow myself to be cooed at, you’ll know how moved I was.
The calls from creditors trying to track down Cat Hater continued. My Lady took to screening her calls, but it did no good. When she didn’t answer, they left intimidating messages. Ann insisted on listening to each and every one, even though Flavia tried to convince her not to.
Then one evening as Bella and I were relaxing at the top of the stairs, lying in wait for a cricket which had taken refuge under a pot-saucer belonging to one of Mrs. Jackson’s geraniums and passing the time until it emerged by listening to some birds squabbling in the bushes below, Cat Hater appeared in the flesh at the base of the stairs.
I removed myself from his path—knowing as I did of his propensity to place his feet in the wrong places at the wrong times—and Bella followed my excellent example. When Cat Hater reached My Lady’s door, he hesitated. He seemed to be engaged in an argument with himself. It involved a great deal of strong language and insults directed toward himself and the provenance of his parentage, all of which I thoroughly agreed with. He concluded his rant by admonishing himself to “Just get ### #### on with it, you #### #### ####### skeevy ####### little ######!”
When he finally worked up the courage to ring the bell, however, it didn’t do him any good. Ann wasn’t there. She’d been kidnapped earlier in the evening by Flavia, who had insisted that Ann forsake the sanctuary of her apartment, even if it was only long enough to get a manicure.
Obviously, Cat Hater had not expected to come and find nobody there, but after pacing up and down a bit and addressing himself by a variety of vile epithets—some of which he’d already used and some of which he hadn’t—he succeeded in getting ahold of himself. He took a pen and a scrap of paper from his pocket, scrawled a note and folded it up. He tried to jam it into a crack beside the door, but it wouldn’t stay.
There was another short period of under-the-breath profanities before Cat Hater experienced a rare stroke of genius. He’d been chewing gum the whole time—a nasty habit of his, which did nothing to make him look any less cretinous. He now removed the gum, shook off the spittle, jammed the gross glob onto the back of the note with his thumb and stuck the note to the door. Then he left, kicking at one of Mrs. Jackson’s geraniums and quietly swearing to himself as he went.
Bella and I crept out from the cover of Mrs. Jackson’s flower pots and watched Cat Hater stalk down the stairs and disappear around the corner.
It wasn’t until My Lady returned—freshly lacquered and with Flavia still in tow—that I was made privy to the contents of Cat Hater’s missive.
“There’s like something stuck to your door,” Flavia pointed out.
“It’s probably a note from Mrs. Jackson complaining that Cupid’s been digging in her flower pots again.”
This spurious and completely groundless accusation had been leveled at me before. It’s actually Fred the Mastiff from 12B who does the digging, but my lips are sealed by gratitude so I let everyone keep on making erroneous assumptions.
Ann had the note down from the door and was holding the glob of gum gingerly between her thumb and forefinger.
“It’s not from Mrs. Jackson,” she said. “It’s from Jimmy. He wants to talk to me.”
“He came here? That—” Flavia then went on to call Jimmy a few of the less-than-complimentary names Cat Hater had called himself only fifteen minutes before. Flavia hates Jimmy only a little less than I do, it seems.
“Shhh!” said Ann. “Mrs. Jackson will hear you!”
Flavia kept right on cursing Cat Hater, but more quietly. When she’d finally run out of steam, she returned to the kernel of the problem.
“Why didn’t he just call?” Flavia asked.
“He says he doesn’t have a phone right now. He says he’ll be back when he has a chance.”
“Wow! No phone. Jimmy? Really?” Flavia was having a hard time believing that, and I was inclined to share her doubt. It was a stretch to imagine Cat Hater without a phone at his fingertips. He must be lying. Either that, or he was living under such reduced circumstances that he was sleeping under a bridge.
“What should I do?” My Lady said.
“You should take your pretty little patootie downstairs and talk to Craig. Like right this minute!”
“Who asked you?”
“You just did. You were like, ‘What should I do?’ a
nd then I was like, ‘You should take your pretty little patootie downstairs and—’”
Ann didn’t let her get any further, but I thought Flavia had made an excellent point.
“I’m not going to ask Craig for help!” Ann insisted.
“Fine. Don’t. If you won’t, I will.”
I’d never seen two women get physical—if you’ll pardon the expression—but that’s exactly what happened. Flavia started down the stairs. Ann reached out to grab her arm and got her by the sleeve instead. Flavia pulled away and there was a sound of tearing fabric, and Ann, temporarily aghast at her own action, let go. Flavia, abruptly released from Ann’s grasp, lost her balance and went down.
Mrs. Jackson’s flower pots got the worst of it, and, in the chaos that followed, the cricket got away. Shame. Crickets are the perfect snack for a warm early-summer evening.
Flavia didn’t wait around for Mrs. Jackson to come out and survey the damage. She was downstairs before Ann even made it back to the cover of her own apartment. I followed Flavia and Bella followed me. The three of us came to a standstill in front of Craig’s door.
Flavia knocked. Craig opened the door, but not very wide. He was wearing a shirt festooned with bits of whatever random snack substances which had substituted for his supper. His hair was standing on end, and he was wearing only one sock.
“Can I come in?” Flavia asked.
Craig shrugged, but he didn’t open the door any wider.
“Really. You and me totally need to have like a serious talk!”
Flavia didn’t wait around any longer for him to make up his mind, and Craig—possibly weakened from weeks of eating nothing but potato chips and Chow Mein—let her push her way in. Bella and I slipped in on her heels.
“Look here!” said Flavia. “I know you don’t like me—”
Craig mumbled something about how of course he liked her, and he didn’t know what she was talking about, and where had she gotten a crazy idea like that? Flavia let him go on for a bit, but then she cut him off.
“It like totally doesn’t matter whether you like me or I like you,” she said. “But Ann like totally matters to both of us, and she’s in like serious trouble and stuff.”
“What happened?” Craig asked.
I think he was expecting to hear that Ann was hospitalized or wanted by the police, because he looked a little relieved when Flavia said, “Jimmy came to see Ann today.”
“So?”
“He’s totally going to ask her for money,” Flavia informed him.
“Did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Ask her for any money?” Craig asked.
“No. Of course not. How could he?”
“What was stopping him?”
“He couldn’t ask.”
“Why?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“Who wasn’t there?”
I was following the thread of Flavia’s story just fine, but I’d witnessed the whole thing and that makes all the difference.
“Ann wasn’t there,” Flavia said, very slowly and in a very loud voice, as if addressing an elderly Pomeranian suffering from the twin afflictions of dementia and hearing loss.
“Ann wasn’t where?” Craig asked.
“Ann wasn’t home. We went for manicures, and Jimmy came while we were gone.”
“But he’s going to come back to see Ann?”
“Yes.”
“And when he does, he’s going to ask Ann for money?”
“Yes.”
Craig sighed. Flavia’s not what you’d call a clear communicator, and this back and forth was taking a toll on Craig. He fished his missing sock out from under the couch, put it on, and ran his fingers through his hair. This half-hearted attempt at grooming only made him look worse.
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Can’t you think of something?” Flavia demanded.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know. Tell him to cease and desist or whatever it is you say when you like totally—”
“Cease and desist from what? It’s not illegal to ask your girlfriend for a loan.”
“Ann’s not his girlfriend.”
“Alright. Ex-girlfriend. What difference does that make?”
“It won’t be a loan. He’ll never pay her back.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he was stealing from her the whole time they were together!” Flavia said.
That got Craig’s attention. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you have proof?”
“Not really, but he’d take cash from her purse, a little at a time. I caught him doing it. Twice.”
He’d done it a lot more than twice. Towards the end of their relationship he’d been sneaking something almost daily.
“But Ann must have noticed,” Craig protested.
“She did.”
“So that’s why they broke up?”
“No. They broke up because of Vanessa,” Flavia corrected him.
“That’s right. I remember. I heard all about Vanessa.”
There was a long pause while Craig tried to brush the snack debris off the front of his t-shirt, and Flavia pretended she didn’t notice what he was doing.
“That’s really not fair of Ann—” Craig finally spoke again. “If what you say is true—”
Flavia assured him that it was all one hundred percent true. She used a couple of Cat Hater’s own favorite phrases to emphasize her point.
“If Jimmy’s really that bad, and Ann kept him around, knowing what she must have known, then why am I the one who gets kicked to the curb just because my ex-fiancée decides to show up for a friendly visit?”
Flavia sighed. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?” Craig demanded. “What am I missing here?”
“She totally didn’t like love Jimmy, but she totally does love you!”
Chapter Ten
Flavia’s pronouncement of Ann’s undying love for Craig went over big. Craig didn’t say anything for quite some time while Flavia waxed eloquent on the theme. She went so far as to suggest a fall wedding and predict how many children Craig and Ann would be blessed with—three—and what their names would be—Patrick, Anastasia and Emily. She had moved on to whether Patrick should take saxophone or piano lessons—she was leaning toward the saxophone because it was a more masculine instrument—when Craig finally cut her off.
This was a relief. I think Flavia could have gone right on planning their collective future well into old age, possibly culminating with the three of them—Craig, Ann and Flavia—buried in a row in some nice cemetery somewhere.
“What if you’re right?” Craig asked. “What if she does still love me?”
“Of course, she totally loves you!” Flavia said. “That’s what I’ve been saying for the last ten minutes.”
It had been more like twenty minutes, but since I wasn’t really part of the conversation, I refrained from butting in to point that out.
“I don’t know what to do,” Craig said.
“Just talk to her,” said Flavia. Sometimes Flavia surprises me. She can drivel on for ages about the theoretical extracurricular activities of the unborn children of a pair of people who aren’t even currently engaged in procreative activities, and then she comes out with a bit of sensible advice like “Just talk to her.”
“What if she won’t talk to me?”
The reason, I suppose, that so much really good advice goes unheeded is that the right thing to do is usually also the hardest thing to do. Craig has his pride and being the one to make the first move would require him to swallow it whole.
“She will talk to you. I promise,” Flavia insisted.
“But what if she won’t?”
“Then you’ll have to make her?”
“How am I supp
osed to do that? Send her a court order?”
For a split second there, I think Flavia thought he was serious, then she bristled a little.
“There’s like no need to get sarcastic. I’m just trying to help.”
“I know,” Craig said. “I’m sorry.”
“What you really need—” said Flavia, “—is like some totally big romantic gesture.”
“What’s a romantic gesture?”
“You know. Like sky-writing or something.”
“You mean I should hire a stunt-pilot to write, ‘I’m sorry. Please take me back, Ann.’ over the Topeka skyline.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“I think that’s a little hokey.”
“So, you want something bigger?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t like have a spare organ you could donate to one of her dying relatives, do you?”
It’s a good indication of Craig’s gloomy state of mind that he didn’t laugh out loud at that suggestion. Flavia watches far too many soap operas.
“Does Ann have any relatives in need of an organ?” Craig asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“Something midway between sky-writing and donating a kidney, I think,” Craig said.
While I may have mentally mocked the specifics of Flavia’s suggestions, I believed the basic reasoning was sound. I, too, was convinced of the efficacy of a big romantic gesture. Craig needed to do something. The question was: what?
I applied myself to this problem for the next week, but nothing suggested itself.
My Lady ignored Cat Hater’s note, and as the days slipped by and he didn’t show up, I think we all started breathing easier. Our relief was premature. One evening the doorbell rang, and Ann went to answer it. I knew immediately, of course, who it was. I could smell his noxious olfactory identifiers: stale sweat, menthol cigarettes, cologne and fruit-flavored chewing gum.
My Lady opened the door, and Cat Hater stepped inside without waiting to be invited.
“Shut the door!” he said.
“Why should I?” Ann was bristling.
