Cat In An Aqua Storm

“No one will hit you again.” The woman’s promise was as vehement as a threat. “No man will abuse you. You won’t have to sell yourself on the stage because of what they did to you.”

“I’m not a stripper! I’m a public relations specialist. I haven’t been abused, only mugged. Wilma, please—”

“No one will come down here now. Too much of a show going on upstairs. Even the guards and the hotel security men stop to rubberneck. Nothing distracts men’s attention like little girls made to perform for it. No one saw me. Not once. No one hardly ever notices me anyway. Too old, too ugly, too useful. My girls won’t have to suffer anymore. All my girls. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a birthday cake, but I can’t let you go on. You might say something, and I can’t stop until I find my own girls. I’m fast, and strong. It won’t hurt. Try not to think about it, and it’ll all be over.”

Temple quivered as she felt the bones in her wrist constrict within a relentless grip. The only thing that could still move was her mouth.

“Wilma, that’s just what abusers tell their victims. It won’t hurt. It’ll be fast. Try not to think about it. You don’t want to be like them, Wilma!”

“It won’t be like them. You’ll sleep. You’ll be at peace. You won’t ever hurt again.”

“But life hurts! You can’t stop pain by taking lives. Kitty Cardozo wanted to live. She had plans. Glinda was hoping to get her kids back. The twins were working out their problem their way, and you denied them that. You denied them their triumphs as well as their tragedies.”

Wilma’s strong hands forced Temple back into the chair by pulling her wrists down.

“Listen,” Temple said. “You’ll ruin your pattern. It’s Friday. Friday’s child is—” She blanked on the next words. She blankety-blank blanked, just when she needed them most!

“Friday’s child is loving and giving,” Wilma recited in a dulcet sing-song for her. “And you’re a Friday.”

“How can you know? Be sure?”

“I always had a head for figures. Not much school learning, and maybe not much sense, but numbers stick. I know the perpetual calendar like a nun knows her rosary beads. It’s all up here.”

Wilma released Temple’s left wrist to tap her forehead and then reached for the G-string she had freed.

No way, Temple thought. Her free hand flashed out, found the big shiny shears on the countertop and picked them up. She shuddered to imagine what would happen if Wilma got them away from her, so she slashed and thrust at the woman’s loose top like a mad Japanese chef, trying not to think of what she was attempting to do to flesh and bone.

Contact. Resistance. The shears bouncing off something hard only to dig into something soft. Temple moaned. Her restrained wrist felt as if it were caught in a meat grinder. Wilma’s grip was forcing her out of the chair and to her knees on the floor, as the woman’s other hand drew back to slap the scissors from her grasp.

Temple steeled herself and drove the blades toward the oncoming palm.

Then, plummeting from above, came a black tarantula, all dangling legs and falling furry bulk, plunging directly atop Wilma’s head.

Wilma screamed. Temple screamed. The tarantula screamed.

With a crack like a firing rifle, the closed dressing room door sprang open under the bulk of a man’s body. Two men’s bodies entered, followed by a familiar woman’s body.

Temple was sitting on the floor, holding her wrist.

The men had jumped Wilma, bearing her down beside Temple and pinioning her wrists. The shears lay—open and innocent of anyone’s blood—a short distance away.

Wilma’s face was bathed in bloody rivulets, though. Scarlet threads ran into her eyes and gasping mouth, soaked into her pink top.

Lieutenant Molina was standing in the doorway, a semiautomatic in her hand, looking very worried and a tad guilty.

The tarantula uncurled from its sinister ball-shape and strutted over to Temple, albeit a bit stiffly. One of its five furry legs hoisted aloft to brush Temple’s face as Midnight Louie rubbed back and forth along her shoulder, back and forth.

“Is she all right?” Molina asked her men. She was eyeing Temple, so they did, too.

“Looks okay,” one said, before grunting and bearing down on Wilma, who was fighting his partner’s handcuffs.

Midnight Louie began purring loudly enough to attract everyone’s attention.

“Give that cat a badge,” one of the men suggested out of the comer of his mouth.

Temple stared at the cat, then threw her arms around him. “Oh, Louie, I can’t believe I almost had you declawed!”

“Poor baby,” Electra crooned. “I brought you a Black Russian.”

She set the drink, which looked like motor oil on ice, on the counter and glared at Lieutenant Molina, as if daring her to object.

Temple sat in the same fatal chair that had originally been Wilma’s, her wrist wrapped in the G-string meant to throttle her. Thin strips of leopard-pattern spandex made an excellent support bandage, and Molina, born camp counselor that she was, had done the honors.