Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 11 Who Lived High

What, he asked himself, had happened to nomenclature in recent years? Strange new words had entered the language and strange new names were popping up in the telephone directory. Mary, Betty, and Ann had been replaced by Thedira and Cheryline. Even ordinary names had tricky spellings like Elizabette and Alyce, causing inconvenience to all concerned, not to mention the time lost in explaining and correcting. (His own name, spelled with the unconventional QW, had been the bane of editors, typesetters, and proofreaders for thirty years, but that fact escaped him.) He signaled for the elevator and heard evidence of mechanical torment in the shaft - noises so threatening that he chose to walk downstairs. Feeling his way through the poorly lighted stairwells, he encountered bags of trash, unidentified odors and - between the seventh and sixth floors - a shrouded figure standing alone on the stairs and mumbling.

On the main floor he passed two elderly women ' in bathrobes, huddled in conference. One of them was saying in a croaking voice, "I've been mugged five times. How many times have you been mugged?" "Only twice," said the other, shrilly, "but the second time they knocked me down." Both of them squinted suspiciously at Qwilleranas he passed.

He found Rupert hanging around the manager's desk, still with the red golf hat on the back of his head, while three boisterous students practiced karate chops in front of the elevators.

"Knock it off," Rupert warned them, "or I'll tell Mrs. T." The youths clicked their heels, clasped their hands prayerfully, and bowed low, then made a dash for Old Red when it arrived.

"Crazy college kids," Rupert explained to Qwilleran. "Everything okay on Fourteen?" "So far, so good." He started for the front door - but returned. "There's something I wanted to ask about, Rupert.

In my living room there's a huge piece of furniture - a serving bar - right in the middle of the floor. Do you happen to know why?" "Mrs. T said to put it there," said the custodian. "I didn't ask no questions. Me and the boy had to move the thing.

It's mighty heavy." "How long have you been working here, Rupert?" "Twenty years next March. Good job! Meet lotsa people. And I get an apartment in the basement thrown in." "What will you do if they tear down the building?" "Go on unemployment. Go on welfare, I reckon, if I can't find work. I'm fifty-six." Qwilleran had a long wait for Amberina, but the time was not wasted. While standing at the front door he watched a circus parade of tenants and visitors corning in and going out. He tried not I to stare at the outlandish clothing on the young ones, or the pathetic condition of some of the old ones, or the exotic beauty wearing a sari, or the fellow with a macaw in a cage.

When two well-dressed young men arrived, carrying a small gold tote bag from the city's most exclusive chocolatier, he watched them go to the burnished bronze door and ring for the private elevator, and he began to conjecture about the "Countess." The mysterious seventy-five-year-old who was visited by men wearing dinner jackets or bearing gifts sounded like Lady Hester Stanhope in Kinglake's Eothen, a book he had been reading aloud to the Siamese.

Lady Hester lived in a crumbling middle-eastern convent, subsisting on milk and enjoying the adulation of desert tribes.

Was the Countess the Lady Hester of the crumbling Casablanca?

His flights of fancy were interrupted when Amberina came running down the hall. "Sorry I'm late. I lost my contact lens, and I couldn't seem to get myself together." He said, "Who are the well-dressed men who ride up and down on the Countess's elevator?" "Her bridge partners," she explained. "She loves to play cards." Amberina had changed since their last meeting three years before. Her strikingly-brunette hair was a different color and a different style-lighter, redder, and frizzier. She had put on weight and her dimples were less beguiling. He was disappointed, but he said, "Good to see you again, Amberina. You're looking great!" "So are you, Mr. Qwilleran, and you look so countrified!" He was wearing his tweed coat with leather patches and his chukka boots.

They left the building and zigzagged down the broken marble slabs with care. "These steps should be repaired before someone trips and sues the Countess," he remarked.

"No point in making repairs when the whole place may be torn down next week," she said with a touch of bitterness. "We're all keeping our fingers crossed that nothing terrible will happen. Mary says the city would love it if the elevator dropped and killed six tenants, or a steam boiler blew up and cooked everyone on the main floor. Then they'd condemn the place and start collecting higher property taxes on a billion-dollar hotel or something. I do hope your people decide to buy the Casablanca, Mr. Qwilleran." Now they were strolling down Junktown's new brick sidewalks, recently planted with small trees and lighted with old-fashioned gaslamps.