Cat In A Leopard Spot

Her arm twined his, her leg had stretched and then flexed over his thigh. He could feel her muscles, taut and as stringy as her costume. Stripping, he assumed, required both dexterity and strength.

It was like being embraced by a boa constrictor.

Matt had just about decided to be ungentlemanly and dump her, when Janice attracted her own variety of snake.

The guy who slithered up was as muscular as the voluptuous Redd. He and Janice must be wearing targets on their backs, Matt thought: newbies to the fleshpots.

Jaded must be the middle name around Secrets.

The man beside Janice was thick-set, obviously overbuilt and obviously flaunting it in a tight T-shirt advertising some heavy-metal band that looked like torturers on leave from Torquemada and the Inquisition. Torquemada and the Inquisition. Sounded like a rock band name. The guy’s fleshy face sagged in all the wrong faces, just slightly enough to blur his strong features.

“You folks buying?” he asked. It sounded like a threat.

“So far,” Matt said, just to divert the guy’s slimy eyes from Janice. That merited a scowl and a glance at the entwined Reddy Foxx.

“Well, I know you must be a big spender, at least, if our star attraction is wasting her between-set time with you.” He glanced back at Janice, who was trying to look cool but was doodling hard jagged lines on the corner of the overturned sketch.

Matt was so glad Vince was facedown for the moment that he barely noticed Miss Foxx’s barely legal custody.

The bouncer smirked, glancing from one to another, all three.

Apparently everyone was too controlled for his taste.

He flicked Janice a glance. “We don’t encourage dykes in here.”

For an instant even Rick stopped nervously wiping down the bar. These were his private customers, and he didn’t want the bouncer to find that out.

Matt was stunned, not knowing what was required in the way of defining his lady friend’s honor.

After a few seconds’ silence, Janice laughed easily. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m here on police business. You want to call someone a dyke, I suggest you call up the lieutenant who sent me here. I’m sure she’d be interested in the customer policies here at Secrets. Me, if I took your comment personally, I’d just call the ACLU.”

His expression tightened, and he glanced suspiciously at Matt.

“What is this? Some gay door-busting setup?”

“Rafi.” The voice of reason came most surprisingly from the entwining Miss Foxx. “Don’t be a big bad bigot. It’s bad for business.”

His shoulders shifted uneasily, as if he knew he was in the wrong, but didn’t know how to back down from it.

“We’re leaving anyway,” Matt said, standing up and automatically dislodging Miss Reddy Foxx.

Janice grabbed her sketch pad, uable to keep Raf from gawking at the image, and brushed past both the stripper and the bouncer.

“When I said I felt like a gunslinger here to ‘draw,’” she muttered to Matt as they headed for the blackness that harbored the door out of there, “I didn’t think I was speaking literally. Does everybody get harassed like that at these places?”

Matt glanced back at the unlikely couple—or maybe the perfect couple—their exit had marooned at the bar.

“Only if you’re obviously out of place, I bet.”

“And we are.”

“Were,” Matt said as they pushed through the big metal door and he took a deep breath of welcome smoke-free, sound-free night air.

He wished he could as easily leave behind the strange image of Max Kinsella that Janet had sketched tonight.

“Want to come in?” Janice asked on her threshold.

Matt hesitated, and watched her instantly regrouping for some face-saving comment.

He looked back to the pink Probe at the curb. Once. What serious whacko would tail a pink Probe, really?

“Since we’re both gay, I’m sure it wouldn’t do any harm.”

Janice laughed in relief. “What a creep. Okay. Come on in.” Now she was scrambling to appear unsurprised.

This dating dance was a version of the twist crossed with doing the hokeypokey.

She rattled the keys, while Matt savored his power at doing the unexpected. Janice was the soul of serenity, but now she wasn’t sure of anything.

Matt was. Now was the time to face facts.

She walked in ahead of him, turning on lamps. Lamps, not overhead lighting. It gave her airy, ingratiating rooms by day a mysterious, shrouded look by night, suitable for seduction.

Except he didn’t think either she or he was up to that.

“Coffee? Or wine?”

“Something in between?”

“Beer?”

He nodded, relieved when she left the living room. The clocks ticked down the hall and around the corner. Ticking clocks seemed old-fashioned for a woman with a modern style like Janice, but he liked their companionable predictability. If a grandfather clock could be heard around the corner, maybe a grandfather was lurking somewhere.

A stab of curiosity about his paternal grandfather crossed his mind. Forget it. Lost in space and time.

He sighed, relaxed. Janice’s figure coming from the kitchen bearing two tall glasses could have been Betty Crocker’s. Not Martha Stewart’s. That was domesticity as de rigueur empire.