Cat In A Leopard Spot

This was a small padded mailer, exactly like the fateful one in which he had gotten the tape from what would become his on-air home, WCOO, “talk radio with heart.”

He still didn’t have a letter opener. Maybe he needed to get a small desk to sit by the door. Where to buy such a thing? Temple would know. He could call her, ask her.

The thought of contacting Temple always gave him a queasy push-pull in his gut, part guilty pleasure, part pure guilt. No. Be a big boy. He didn’t need a spirit guide for every step of his life, even the small interior-decorating ones.

He fetched a table knife from the kitchen and opened the lone mailer first, out of sentimentality and weird expectation. What life-altering surprise would this one hold? He supposed lottery winners who still bought tickets often felt that way.

An irregular lump deformed this package, but too small to be a cassette. A single die, maybe? Key chain? Some Strip joint gambling promotion?

A small golden object tumbled into his palm. A sculpture? A snake biting its own tail. He recognized the motif. The worm Ouroboros, ancient symbol of eternity; destruction and renewal. A single potent image of the cycle of creation: it begets, weds, impregnates, and slays itself, like nature. Over and over.

In centuries past, worms, snakes, and dragons all intertwined into a quasi-fantastic, quasi-religious symbolism. You had St. George and the dragon. The worm Ouroboros. The serpent in the Garden of Eden. The new religion chasing the tail of established superstition and biting it. He took the object to the French doors. Now he needed—yes, needed!—a magnifying glass. Who did he think he was, Sherlock Holmes? Why be a piker? A whole brass desk set for his yet-unbought new desk: letter opener, magnifying glass, stamp holder…

He squinted at the bantam-size chicken scratchings inside the snake. A K as in karat. But was it a 12-, 14-, or 18-K item? All he could tell was that it was purportedly real gold. And some Greek letters:

He picked up the envelope to study its exterior. His name hand printed on the outside. No return address.

Finally, he pushed his fingers into the small envelop until he pulled out a plum. An ordinary Post-it note. Its adhesive edge had clung to the bubble-pack lining the envelope.

Green rollerball ink slanted across the pink rectangular surface.

“Wear me!” Underlined.

He lifted the snake to the light. Well crafted, but weird.

Wear? How? Why?

As he stared at it, his blood slowed, then chilled. The room’s temperature hadn’t budged, but he felt as reptilian as a hibernating rattler himself.

This was a worm Ouroboros, all right, but it was also a ring.

The last ring he had worn had been the simple gold wedding band of a Catholic priest, a symbol of his commitment to celibacy, of his marriage to the Church. He hesitated, but he had to know: he jammed the ring onto a finger—the middle finger on his right hand.

It fit perfectly.

Wear me.

An order from…he knew who.

Drink me.

And Alice had shrunk.

Matt stared at Kitty O’Connor’s ring. At the order that came with it.

Wear me.

Or else.

And if he did, he’d shrink too.

Just like Alice.

He went to the bedroom to call Temple after all.

“You want Max?” she asked, incredulous, after two minutes of the usual banalities with which he had prefaced his request.

“I need to talk to him, or maybe vice versa. Can you ask him to get in touch with me?”

“Sure. I can ask.”

“That’s all that I ask.”

“There’s nothing you want to tell me?”

“I…had a good time in Chicago. Saw my mother.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were gone.”

“Speaking engagement.” The word “engagement” suddenly took on a sinister new resonance. “Temple. Call him right away.”

“You got it.” She hesitated, didn’t want to say good-bye, wanted to ask a few questions. He didn’t want to answer any.

“Thanks,” he said quickly. “ ’Bye.”

It was ironic that he was rushing to hang up on Temple. Usually it was the other way around. A nasty thought had surfaced. Maybe his phone was tapped. He should have called Temple and made his unprecedented request from somewhere else.

Kitty O’Connor was the last person in the world he wanted to know that he was calling in Max Kinsella.

Matt tried to watch TV, then to listen to his new stereo. He went to the bedroom and looked for a book he hadn’t read before, or one he had and that he could count on to distract him.

Nothing worked.

The gold snake ring lay coiled on the otherwise empty gray cube table. All he needed was an apple to make an apropos still life. And maybe a naked woman. God knew there were a few in Las Vegas.

Probably his mother had been right. It was a godless town.

It takes a thief to catch a thief. To catch a stalker, did it take…Max Kinsella?

No. To catch a stalker, stalk the stalker’s past.

He ought to know that by now.

At 8:10 P.M., his doorbell rang.

Matt approached the coffered door with uncustomary caution.